Posted By martinw
I have been in that situation before. It was a waste of time, as it was for my boss's boss who demanded full utilisation of work time but did not understand the time taken for most of the H&S activities, so I could have put down 6 hours for something which would take me 3 and the uberboss would be none the wiser. Petered out after a while, became a copy and paste exercise on a weekly form.
However, in this instance, the finance manager asking you to justify your existence? I know that I am cynical, but should you be hearing alarm bells about now? Might be worth arranging a lot of meetings that you may have been putting off!

Posted By Phil Rose
Don't envy you that one Tracey - I have lost count of the number of times that I have gone into work with a number of specific objectives in mind for that day, and then left of late not having done one of them as I have been sidetracked, collared, etc for a number of other things. Good luck!

Posted By William O'Donnell
I may be missing something here, if I am then forgive me. But are we not as H&S Practitioners constantly advising managers that they need to have a health and safety plan in place which will detail their short, medium and long term objectives and goals, with a clear route to how they will achieve these aims.
And yet if the responses to this thread are to be believed then we have H&S Officers out there who cannot even plan their diary for a month with their scheduled works. Are you saying that your work schedule is so hectic, and shambolic, that you truly do not know what you will be doing from one day to the next? Personally I have programmed my H&S audits and staff training for the YEAR so struggle to understand why your are unable to plan for a month.
Of course there will always be unexpected situations which will crop up from time to time and will mean that you need to rearrange your work to deal with such events, but these should be the exception not the weekly norm, and your schedule should provide enough flexibility to meet this need.
If I were the Finance Manager it would worry me that we had a H&S Practitioner on the books who could not provide me with a monthly works schedule, and felt offended that they were not exempt from having to demonstrate that they were doing what we were paying them for.

Posted By A Campbell
William,

In the area of operations I get involved in I have a diary schedule (more like a wish list) as what I plan/intend to carry out.

in the REAL world this changes from week/day to day and sometimes we have to react to what is happening NOW and not next month... call it reactive, but it all takes time from what we plan ahead for.

Makes planning for holidays etc a nightmare if you are a 1 person team!

Posted By Luke.
"Therefore I would think that you would have more than a days notice of the need for a lifting plan which would then throw all your schedule out of sync". - You would like to think so, but unfortunatly not - one of the many reasons i am leaving!


"Sorry but I find it astonishing that we have highly qualified professionals out there who appear incapable of planning their work beyond an afternoon." - Incapable is a very strong word...If the company tracey works for is anything like mine, then it is not the safety pro who is incapable, we can plan as much as we would like, but if it is the company that is creating deadlines, short notice work etc.. then your diary might as well be used to doodle in!

Posted By Luke.
actually William - maybe I'm being the naive one here.. or maybe just lack of coffee..


Don't get me wrong, I have a yearly plan of development, areas of concern and time scales to rectify this etc which changes on a monthly basis but the overall goal remains .. but i was referring more to a day by day (almost hour by hour break down of what i am planning) - this is what ends up going to pot!

Posted By MT
Michty William, is it really cold up there?

I'm an LA employee, and we are given "batches" of work quarterly, so that's as far as I can plan ahead. I might think I am going to visit x, y and z today in New Town, but then I might receive an accident report which I have to go to Old Town to investigate. Old Town happens to be an hour's drive in the opposite direction to New Town. Therefore, week's schedule oot ra windae and I need to find another day to visit x, y and z.

So I have a rough schedule, but it's only ever in my diary in pencil. Call me afraid of commitment, but it's the best I can do. I don't agree that it calls my professionalism into doubt.

Posted By Andy Brazier
Title of the thread is quite ironic given that it seems many H&S personnel are either unable or incapable (depending on your point of view) of managing time.

I'm with the camp that think this was a quite reasonable request of a boss to find out what a member of staff is doing and has planned.

I think there is a bit of a viscous circle where H&S people feel they need to 'drop everything' to deal with an urgent request. Incidents aside (which I agree will always interfere with any schedule) the problem is that others stop planning or informing you of events because they know you will 'drop everything' when they ask (e.g. a lifting plan). I'd argue this is actually an argument for being more precise about your plans because it puts you in the position where you can explain that you can do X but it means Y can't get done.

What I don't understand is that a lot of H&S work involves interaction with others. If you are saying you need to respond to these urgent requests, it means you must be disrupting a whole load of other people's schedules. If you have arranged to visit site X but then go to site Y, it is not only you who has been effected. This can't do H&S reputation any favours.

Having said all that, one great relief of working as a self-employed consultant is that I don't have to account for every 15 minutes of my time in weekly timesheets. When I was employed by a consultancy company, this is what we had to do, and there was no possibility of booking time to a non-specific activity (i.e. those hours in the week where you can't quite explain what you were doing, even though you were busy).

Posted By D H
I'm with you William - part of the planning stage of a project is what needs done, how long will it take, what resources do we need to have in place and when.
I have had to break my work down to key project activities and suggest hours taken to do them over the project life of three years.
All the other disciplines on the project are doing the same.
That plus the cost of materials will give us a basis to supply a cost estimate to the client for the project.

Ok there is a bit of slippage involved, but it ensures proper planning is in place, or the company lose money.

Dave

Posted By seanc
William, you are such a well organised person, i too like to think that i am well organised and ahead of the game.
Maybe you do not deal with the day to day running of your organisation.
I am only a humble Branch H&S Officer for my union, and i can tell you that on some days i do not even get the chance for a lunch break, i turn up for work knowing what i need to get done on that day only for a spanner to appear and completely change my day around.
Today for example i had a meeting booked for 9.30am and at 9.24am i received a phone call which needed my immediate attention, i have nobody to fill my shoes on these occasions, and it is stressful trying to make sure that every base is covered, and nobody is let down.
H&S is a very important issue, although many of my work colleagues feel differently, but that's another subject for another day.
i do think that your comments sound reasonable, however in the real world its not like that at all.