Quality and what makes it
How effective is your organisation in ensuring the safety of your people? This question has taken on a new meaning over the last few years for two reasons. Firstly, because the obligations to provide safe workplaces have expanded and secondly, because the threats and hazards in workplaces have changed significantly.
The days when it was enough to think about manual handling, safe equipment and spaces have passed. These days we need to add to those types of risk - psychological safety, threat of intimate partner violence, cyber crime, climate change and political violence to name a few.
The organisational approaches required to keep people safe have changed, and our policies, plans and preparations need to as well. We need approaches that recognise that threats can and do come from within, and that the types of adverse impacts on teams - even in peacetime settings - can be catastrophic.
Take for example, intimate partner violence. In Victoria, five women were murdered by someone known to them in the past months. Many of those women will have had prior incursions of the perpetrator into workplaces, incidents that threatened not only that woman herself, but also her friends, colleagues and clients. Think how often this behaviour plays out in carparks, schools, health care settings and at work. This presents a threat not just to that woman but to clients and other staff. recognising this epidemic, workplaces today need to think about, plan and prepare for this type of scenario. There is a good chance that events like this are not on your register of risks. Or even if they are, there is likely no meaningful plan to manage a hostile threat of this type.
The other big change is climate related adverse weather events, events which can severely impact colleagues availability and well being and significantly threaten an organisation’s business continuity.
Have you given thought to what you would do if significant numbers of staff were unable to make it to work simultaneously, or worse, found themselves without adequate housing for an extended period. These types of eventualities are increasingly common. Many households, after natural disaster, are finding themselves without housing for months on end, or in a constant state of heightened anxiety as they watch for threatening fire warnings or clean up after floods. The impact on your organisation too can be profound.
On the cyber front, the work home boundaries are blurring, an employee who experiences identity theft may unwittingly expose the whole organisation to threat actors. Ensuring that staff are aware of contagion risks and disclose relevant events are contemporary risks that organisations policies, codes and contracts need to address.
What these different scenarios have in common is that they are all features of the world we live in - right now. The challenges of the world are moving quickly. What seemed like a good plan five years ago may not meet the challenges of today. One of the greatest challenges for organisations is making sure that systems that have been in place for a long time are fit for purpose, in the context of the poly crisis.
Mārama Group work with organisations who have recognised the need for systems to be both future and present capable.
We recommend an evidence-based refresh, building on the experiences of others who are right now getting to grip with these challenges real time. - learning from those who have lived through the unexpected and unplanned for. There is great business continuity value in partnering up with another group of similar scope and scale and planning to provide back up to each other if the worst happens.
Refreshing our thinking about the type of issues that might derail your organisation is key to being diligent and as prepared as possible.