How can directors get more from a workplace visit?

II’ve been speaking with directors who are moving away from the standard workplace tour to better understand what is happening on the ground.

One approach I particularly like is for the board to nominate a director to spend time in the workplace the day before a scheduled board meeting. Rather than doing a general tour, that director takes a deep dive into one critical health or safety risk, then reports back to the board the following day.

When a larger group of directors visits a workplace, you are never going to get a true feel for an ordinary working day. People know you are coming. A group walking around is very visible. And, with the best of intentions, site management and health and safety professionals will often orchestrate the visit to some degree. 
You don’t necessarily get that rough-around-the-edges view of an ordinary working day.

Going as an individual removes a lot of that. But to make the most of the opportunity, you need to be clear about why you are there.

Listen and learn

You are not there to conduct an audit or an inspection. You are not there to provide advice or coach people. You are primarily there to listen and learn. 
That means putting yourself in a position of humility and admitting you don’t know, but you would like to know. You want to understand the work, what makes it challenging, what is functioning well and what might not be functioning so well.

The purpose isn’t to catch people doing something wrong. It is to understand the reality of the work.

Choose a risk where you have questions 

Work with your health and safety professional to choose the right critical health or safety risk. Don’t choose something you already know is being well managed.

Look instead for a risk where there are assumptions or unanswered questions – perhaps an emerging risk, an area of concern or one where the context is changing significantly. 

Understand the what, where, when, how and why of the risk. What standards, codes of practice or legal requirements apply? How does the risk manifest itself in your workplace? What challenges is the organisation currently facing in managing the risk? 

You want to arrive with enough knowledge to ask useful questions, while remaining open to what you find.

Conversations, observations and documentation 

On the day, I’d focus on getting information from three sources – conversations, observations and documentation.

With conversations, make sure you get a good cross-section of the organisation. Spend time talking with site management and team leaders, but also frontline workers and health and safety representatives. 

Don’t forget contractors, cleaners or people working the night shift. These groups may experience the risk and the controls around it quite differently.

Then find a way to observe the work as closely as you safely can where risk is present, without creating risk for yourself or others and without becoming a distraction. 

You want to be up close. You want to see the work being done, rather than simply hearing how it is supposed to happen.

The third source is documentation, but this isn’t about auditing documents. Be curious, instead, about the data being gathered about the critical risk and its controls.

What is being collected? Where and when is it collected? Who collects it? What is it being used for?

Those three sources of information should give you a good sense of both the risk exposure and the effectiveness of the controls around it.

Take the learning back to the board

The following day, your job as the nominated director is to report back to the board on what you found – the good stuff as well as the learning opportunities. 
The aim isn’t to return with a list of faults. It is to give your fellow directors a clearer picture of the risk, the controls around it and what you saw and heard in the workplace. 

Dan Davis is Head of Research, Development and Training (NZ) at HSE Global. He works with boards, executive teams and frontline leaders across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, combining workplace consulting, facilitation and training. His work focuses on helping organisations move beyond a traditional view of health and safety as a cost of doing business, towards seeing it as a driver of better performance, culture and engagement.