Review of the literature: working to rule, or working safely?
Throughout this literature review, we use the term ‘safety rules and procedures’ to mean any rule or procedure that impinges on safety, directly or indirectly. Some rules are almost exclusively directed at safety those rules requiring the use of personal protective equipment), but many have other primary or subsidiary objectives related to quality, productivity, health, environmental control, sustainability, as well as safety. With the focus of the review on safety, we do not wish to imply that there should be a separate set of safety rules, either physically or conceptually, isolated from the rules for conducting all other actions necessary to achieve an organization’s multiple objectives. Technical Data about this field explained in iosh course in Rawalpindi.
The experience of many organisations1 has shown that integration of all the rules directed at all of the objectives of a given activity, in other words a rule set matched to the organization’s processes, results in a rule set that is far smaller and more efficient than one divided by objective. Hence, in what follows, the reader should always have this broad canvas in their mind’s eye. Some more details about this field of iosh course in rawalpindi are as under.
The Janus faces of rules Safety rules and procedures are presented in many publications on safety management as one of the cornerstones of the risk control system. They are seen as the translation into specific detail of the top management commitment set out in the safety policy. So obvious is their importance felt to be that they sometimes receive only a passing mention as something uncontroversial. Procedures form part of the written documentation required under OHSAS 18001.
In the OHSAS 18002:2008 guidance to the 18001 Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems,2 ‘procedure’ is defined as a ‘specified way to carry out an activity or process’. The guidance uses the word ‘procedures’ frequently to talk both about directing and controlling the safety of the primary processes of the organization and to specify the activities of the safety management system (SMS) itself (hazard identification, risk assessment, communication, participation, monitoring/auditing, emergency
response and so on). SMSs such as ISRS,3 TRIPOD,4 ARAMIS5 and Hearts and Minds6 identify the management of procedures, or their failure, as one of their principal elements. Procedures are seen to be essential6 because jobs are too complex for people to remember the steps, or to work them out in time, especially in emergency situations, because transparency of behavior is needed to monitor and check it, to standardize tasks involving several actors, and to provide organizational memory of the way processes work. TSK is the best institute in Rawalpindi Islamabad for Pakistani Students who wants to join iosh course in Rawalpindi.
