Posted By Richard Forster To practitioners in charge of numerous sites. How do you ensure that the guidance you issue is implemented? Imagine you have over 100 varying establishments. You have produced a large amount of guidance on all of the obvious, and some not so obvious, topics. You offer training and seem quite happy that the establishments are, to a certain degree, self managing. How do you go about checking? How do you 'close the loop'? What methods do you employ to build up the biggest picture as to how well the establishments are performing and what of your guidance (complete with checklists). Does it work, if so how well? Seasonal Greetings good people!

Posted By Raymond Rapp Hi Richard, It is in fact the 'holy grail'is it not. Obviously there are measures such as audits, benchmarking etc but have you considered implementing a safety climate survey otherwise known as a Safety Culture. The HSE have a generic Safety Cimate Tool that can be purchased or perhaps you might wish to design your own attitude measurement survey. I am going to write my dissertation on the subject and have been researching it in order to design and implement a bespoke survey in my organisation. I believe it is probably the most thorough and accurate means of measuring health and safety in a large organisation to date. I suggest you check out the HSE climate tool via the search engine and give it some thought and if still not sure email me with any ideas/problems that we can discuss. Regards Ray

Posted By Laura Reed Richard, I am not sure that there is any way to close the loop on your safety management system. The nature of management systems is that they require audit and review to be effective and therefore are never truely closed. If you are talking about monitoring the effectiveness of corrective actions and guidance then as suggested previous audit is the best tool that we have - as long as the audits are carried out by a qualified H&S professional. To close out a management system would make it become stagnant. Continuous improvement is the main purpose of management systems and therefore they are continuously evolving. Merry Christmas to all reading the forum. With kind regards, Laura