A couple of years ago I thought this was a good idea as well. I cribbed some ideas from H&S strategies of other similar organisations on the internet (in our case laboratories) and drafted a document. I sent it up to the board. It then spend 6 months being chewed over, corrected and polished, usually by people who had a limited understanding of what H&S is about but were very concerned about ‘giving the right message’. I then passed it on to the trades union side who similarly spent 6 months tearing the paperwork apart before sending it back to the board for more comments. The document that came out was not what I had wanted in the first place but it would do. The key thing in this process as I have learned is to: a. Have a clear idea what you want and need in such a document b. Have the clear backing from the stakeholders as to what they want. The document will be a compromise but you need to make sure that it is something that you can work with. On the other hand, nobody might care about it and they will let you write anything you want. Then of course it will be plain sailing except for the fact that you might not have any support for your actions in the future based on a document that nobody cares about. Who said that this job was easy?

Hi, You may want to also consider basing it around your H&S management system such as HSG65 or similar as can give you some headings and structure. Have any of your other departments done something similar for a non H&S strategy to see how this is done in your organisation? Good points from Ray and AK

Although not exhaustive, I have a couple questions..... Where are you starting from; are you after a Strategy in the purest of terms or an Improvement Plan and where does your site sit in the overall organisation? What type of work does your organisation do, how do your competitor’s measure their performance etc.? When will the objectives of the Strategy be delivered, next year, 2014 etc.? The Strategy has to be aligned with and supportive of the organisations Business Strategy otherwise it will not get off the ground, regardless of how it is presented. The objectives need to clear and concise, with a clear line of sight between the strategic, tactical and operational requirements. How will you measure the improvements across your organisation etc? Sorry for all the questions, but if you wish to discuss (which is probably easier) then please feel free to contact me and we can arrange a mutually convenient time.

Developing a strategic direction can be a valuable step in improvement. In my experience the best place to start is with your identified weak points and then see how they fit together. From there it is relatively simple to devise a coherent strategy that your improvement plans can align with. It's a good way of ensuring the activities you want to take are sensibly aligned with the overall direction you've identified. Drop me a line if you want to chat over anything.

Hi all Thank you for your advise and posts. I'm looking at going back to basics now to look at HSG65 and set my objectives against improving the Management System Policies that are lacking and developing keys policies and implementing these over the next 12 months in conjunction with the risk assessment programme. I beleive this is the correct approach to implement a long term improvement as without detailed policies in place there is no foundation to sustain long term controls that can be measured. Hoping i'm on the right track!