Safety Management- Proactive and Reactive Monitoring

Does your health and safety management consist of mostly proactive or reactive safety measures?
Which one you focus on could have a big impact on your safety culture, and your bottom line.
In facilities and building management, we often talk about proactive and reactive maintenance, but
you may not have heard these phrases in relation to health and safety. We can actually plan our
health and safety management in the same way, in order to bring long-term health and safety
benefits to an organisation.
But what's the difference between proactive and reactive health and safety management? Should
you use one, or the other, or both?

Proactive monitoring is all about checking and keeping ahead of the game to ensure that standards
are met and that the workplace is in safe and free from H&S Risk before unwanted even/situation
happened.

Reactive monitoring is about measuring safety performance by reference and ill health that had
already happened.

Proactive monitoring should be a line management function, but we have to remember that the
senior management has responsibility for ensuring that effective health and safety performance
monitoring is place, such as:

1. The number and quality of Risk assessments for instance; Ergonomic Assessment or Noise
Assessment
2. The provision of health and safety training for example Manual handling or Abrasive Wheel
3. Completion of committee meetings,
4. Systematic workplace inspections of the following: plant, premises, people, procedure
5. Safety review meetings,
6. Safety surveys such as examination of structural integrity of a building or the item
7. Safety tours carried out by a group of the individual mangers
8. Safety sampling for example soil sampling to define at early stage the possible
contamination

In the short term, proactive safety measures can seem more expensive you are putting in place on
health and safety before any safety or health issues may have developed.
Proactive safety inspections, regular auditing, ongoing training, near-miss reporting and active
supervision will all form part of a proactive safety management structure.
The benefits of a proactive safety regime are that it will enforce a positive safety culture, help to
prevent accidents from occurring, and improve health and safety budgeting.
The workplace inspection plays an important role in ensuring that safety standard is acceptable in
the workplace. They allow management to resolve problems before those problems become a
critical. They also allow workers to see that checks are being carried out and perhaps get involved in
the inspection process itself.
Workers and senior management involved in inspection helps promote a positive health and safety
culture which’s a key for every workplace.

Reactive monitoring uses accidents, incidents ill health and other unwanted situation, things that
have already gone wrong and a negative aspect to focus on which is a measurement failure.

There are two main methods of carrying out reactive monitoring by all members in the organisation:

1. Lesson learn from individual even such as an accident, incident, near miss, ill health or a
danger occurrence.
2. Lesson learn from a data or information gathered from large number of mentions above.
3. Identifying trends.
4. Ill health and sickness reviews.

With reactive health and safety measures, you are taking action after things have gone wrong. This
often means that there is more pressure to take action quickly so that work can re-commence and
people can be assured that there is no risk of reoccurrence.
There may also be external pressure from insurance companies, clients, and the HSE if the incident is
serious.
In the long term, reactive safety measures tend to be more expansive, because you will need to put
in place many of the same things that could have been done before an accident occurred, plus
having the extra expense and costs associated with an accident.

So, which is best proactive or reactive?

It might seem obvious by now that we favour a proactive safety management approach. It's almost
always cheaper in the long run, and of course, it's better to prevent an accident before it happens
than wait for one to happen.
With proactive safety management, health and safety improvements, training or inspections can be
planned to minimise disruption. Not so when an accident occurs and the HSE are breathing down
your neck, not to mention the personal injury lawyers and insurance companies.
Reactive safety management and monitoring is a measurement of failure when something has gone
wrong. Proactive safety management and monitoring is a measurement of success, a way to keep
things working right and safe.
However, reactive safety measures still have a place, even in a proactive health and safety
management system. You should always be prepared, should there be a failure in your control’s
measures. Part of proactive safety management will involve planning for emergencies and putting in
place accident reporting and investigation procedures, in the hope that you will not have to use
them.

There is room for both proactive and reactive safety management within all organisations, but the
better your proactive safety management becomes the less reactive requirements you should have.