Hi Carol

Our formal risk register of more than 150 significant risks sits on a database with the H&S team, and no-one looks at it. What it supports are:
A set of 7 critical risk bowties developed by the workers.
A matching set of 7 key critical risk controls that the workers have influence and control over. These are distilled down to an A4 page and are attached to all tailgate forms, and every SWMS'.
Where a SWMS needs to drill down further then the information from the formal register is used.

We find that it has been simplier and easier for our workers to understand and explain, as they are only dealing with what they have influence and control over.

For context we are a electricity supply company working on live electricity up to 66 kV, at heights and in excavations, lots of plant and machinery, working 24/7 including adverse weather - so some significant hazards.

The auditable part of this is that there is a obvious pathway back to the detail in the formal risk register.

Cheers
Stephen.

We tried to make relatable to each area instead of a whole lot of info in a system. Our H&S reps helped to develop a short doc summarising the key risks in their area with photos and easy to read text. The first page is the same in all areas explaining how to get into the incident & risk management system & who to contact if you have any issues, questions etc. Feedback so far has been positive.

We're a trucking company and our risk register is large. It includes on-road and off-road hazards and risks as well as site risks. It's an integral part of our on-boarding process. It's not just words - there's photos as well and each risk often has a story so it's also conversational.

Risks can also be singled out and the controls reviewed at health and safety meetings.

The register is also supported by our critical risk standards.

Away from the coal face, our most significant organizational risks are reported to our Board every month, alongside mitigations that have been planned/implemented. We have approximately 18 Org-wide risks so our top 3 - 5 can change, hence the Board knows our priorities and vice a versa.

So looking at how it is actually used? We start with the larger risk register and filter it down into a smaller documents with those bite-sized chunks the worker needs.

I'm in a horticultural operation with orchards, coolstores, trucking and processing facilities. Obviously the risk register has a number of hazards that are relevant to all employees and there are other hazards only be relevant to those working in a certain area or role. This led to us splitting our risk register into a Common Hazards section and location specific hazards sections. You will see some hazards duplicated across locations in the register because of the way we classify the hazards by location. I have mixed feelings about the duplication but it seems to work alright for us.

The risk register provides a basis from which to develop inductions, SOPs, and other material. It is used by senior, H&S and HR staff in preparing those materials. Although the risk register is available to regular staff, none are expected to read it or use it day-to-day. The worker on the ground ends up with a location-specific induction and an SOP with what they need to know in their role.

Great feedback... thank you all!

My takeaway now is to drill down to the top 10 risks, integrate those into our SOP's and link them back to our OH&SMS/Risk Register so that we have an auditable pathway and one for workers to follow should they choose. Great comments across a wide variety of industries - this is so good :)

Perfect...
I also put a short excerpt from the risk register of the top few risks in the back of the SOP to give some context to why the procedures are there, and give some feeling to the overall level of risk in an activity.

We have started aligning our identified risks(business unit) with our reported incidents/ events and or injuries. And this is also used in reporting at all levels of HS meetings. Trying to "socialize" the Risks of our Business Unit with all staff, from frontline to GM. Generating discussion

I'm entering this discussion late but I'd like to endorse Jason Borkovsky's final paragraph above. A Hazard Register is not, in itself, intended to be a training tool that workers will voluntarily and eagerly read and absorb. Let's put it this way: If that is our intention, we are going to be disappointed.

I'm sure a small minority of workers might read a Hazard Register. And I would hope workers have been involved in formulating the Register and the risk control measures.

But the Register has to be activated and maintained at a management and supervisory level. I personally don't even expect workers to read and assimilate dire workplace warning signs either. That is, unless they have also been trained or otherwise protected from whatever the dire hazard is. Actions speak louder than words and supervision is still required, regardless of the training badges.

As an occasional health and safety auditor, I am perfectly fine with a Hazard that only refers to training in a specific SOP, as long as it was validated with the requisite training records. No use on a noticeboard but so what? The training has been done. Far more focused than generic Hazard Registers (we've all seen them), with risk controls like "Be careful", "Use appropriate PPE", "Refer to manufacturer's instructions". Anything that passive is a cop-out.

At the other extreme, highly detailed control measures slapped on the noticeboard in a Hazard Register are possibly worse. Fine for managers and HS people so they can administratively scratch the line in the sand, but less useful as everyday reading material.

To use a driving analogy, The NZTA could be seen as having the Hazard Register. It's all good stuff but try poring through it. The Road Code is the SOP that puts a fine edge on it all: The Driving Test is the verification. The cops are largely the supervisors. But all that didn't happen by posting the NZTA hazards on power poles.

Post-script: Having said that, my analogy puts aside the fact that we still manage to die on the roads in large numbers. Nothing is perfect. But it's just an analogy. And don't worry, both at work and on the roads, we are on the way to Zero Harm. Yay! One of meme-based safety's biggest myths but that's another story.

Hi team. I too am entering this discussion late. I'm in the process of assisting a company to obtain ISO45001 and ISO14001. The HSE register has become highly debated within the audits and with the auditor. We have broken the register into HS and Environmental because the auditor suggested it. We too are having difficulties with engagement. We have Hazard Control plans, SOP, prestarts which all relate back to the register but where we fall down in the auditors eyes is that the business doesn't know if the controls work and how the feedback is brought back into the fold. The other day I put 5 HCPS out for discussion and the feedback was amazing. Some had never seen them, they didn't know where to find them. I also do HUB posts to the team approximately fortnightly. I'd love feedback on what other ideas can I utilise and how I can achieve compliance within the ISO realm. Thanks team

Hi Simon & Lee (and everyone else who has taken the time to read and comment)

Thanks for your feedback! I especially like Simon's analogy using NZTA! Very appropriate for us as we also are a trucking/towing company so I found this amusing. As for Zero Harm.... well we'll see about that!

One of the things for "compliance" with ISO45001 and working towards our first surveillance audit is that to comply with HSWA, we MUST involve staff who are doing the job when we create or audit/edit our Hazard ID/Risk Register. In our industry, it's hard to get the drivers out of trucks for enough time to come to the boardroom for a meeting to meet that particular compliance requirement.

Engagement is a real problem (like Lee said), and I struggle with relying on Intranet posts or even direct emails to get people to react or give an opinion. SOP's are published asking for feedback, but rarely do we get any. Short of getting into a truck with a driver to pin him down and force some engagement out of him, (and there have approx 40 other drivers as well) - we really struggle and it's a problem.

Sorry for the rant, but am a bit frustrated. Even TBT's are difficult to achieve with such a dynamic, revolving (24/7 service) and it's difficult to get enough staff together at one time to achieve what we need. Any ideas would be welcome.

Appreciate all the comments, thank you :)

One thing I dislike about risk registers (and hazard registers) is they can too easily become "wallpaper" - rarely read and maybe only reviewed annually. An approach I've seen tried is a "risk report card" that records important information about a risk. The risk owner carries it with them and it's used in team meetings and updated after discussion.
Does it work? I've no idea! But it is certainly more dynamic than some registers.
It's copyright so I can't share the article but this is its reference. It may be in a local library.
Kaplan, R. S., & Mikes, A. (2012). Managing risks: a new framework. Harvard Business Review, 90(6), 48-60.

Short of getting into a truck with a driver to pin him down and force some engagement out of him

Yes, engagement is a problem. It can force you into that situation of relying on work-as-imagined versus work-as-done. I imagine its especially difficult if someone is in a larger organisation where the H&S roles involved in creating policy and process become more office-based and have less contact with the frontlines.

Getting into a truck with that driver is something I have done. In my organisation I am fortunate enough to be able to spend time with the operators and I have the management support to do so. I might go out to a new job with them and pester them, asking questions about why they choose to do what they do and learn something about the role.

Hazard registers are necessary but generally useless for front line workers. They are necessary to help assess the risks and inform workers what they need to know in terms of hazard identification and mitigation. This is not achieved through getting workers to read hazard registers, but rather to inform pre-starts, JSAs etc prior to undertaking the work.
So essentially risk registers are a backroom tool (ensure workers are engaged in developing them and get feedback from them for review). The essential step is to turn this information into something useful for workers to use.

This is an interesting discussion! I see the Kaplan, R. S., & Mikes, A. article is freely accessible online here: https://hbr.org/2012/06/managing-risks-a-new-framework

Hazard registers are necessary — Mike Massaar

Is it the "hazard register" that is actually necessary? or is it the documentation of what has been agreed on - which could take many different forms. I agree with your points regarding worker participation and consultation in the process, but question if it should be seen as a backroom tool - it is an agreement based on what work needs to be done and what needs to be provided to do that work without excessive risk - not just a reference document to copy into further safety paperwork.
Now this could all just be misunderstandings of what is being meant by those terms, but I feel the bigger issue to first address is to nail down the actual purpose of the "risk register" rather than how it is used.
Risk registers do not manage risk - they are just a record of an agreement. They are not useful to front-line workers for day-to-day work as they have limited means to actual change how work is being done in the present (apart from simply stopping work altogether). They may be useful to those that plan and schedule work - to understand what resources are actually required for a given task, but that depends on the quality of the information recorded - simple "wear PPE" or even "wear safety boots / gloves" does not help those planning work - to actually manage they risk they will still have to delve deeper to understand the risk and what the actual controls should be, i.e. what "gloves" specifically. But too often it is a copy past exercise and then left to the front-line to "tell us what gloves you actually need" while they also have to get started and keep up with the work schedule.

Engagement is a real problem — Carol Tucker

What other engagement "touch points" do you have with your drivers? Do they have weekly/monthly/quarterly reviews with their team leaders or managers? in the non-H&S space how are work issues identified and handled? Find what existing processes you can leverage rather than creating entirely new ones specifically for H&S.
Flip-side - if there are no existing processes don't just focus on implementing something for H&S, work around how you can support the drivers as a whole not just H&S.