Plan

Planning involves setting goals and objectives and detailing what steps you need to take to make your improvement strategies happen.

On this page

  1. The planning process
  2. Writing your plan
  3. Tools available

The planning process

Planning is essentially a three-step process, where you consider:

The answers to these questions will need to be written into a plan.

1. What do we need to improve?

Complete a review to identify the health and safety issues that need to be in your improvement plan.

Identify measures and targets before you write the improvements down as objectives. See Writing your plan below for more information.

2. How will we bring about improvements?

Use a range of methods to develop strategies for improvement:

  • Talk with workers to brainstorm strategies and solutions
  • Look at how other companies in your industry have solved similar problems
  • Explore health and safety literature and relevant legislation
  • Seek advice from a safety expert or specialist

Once you have identified possible strategies, choose those that will have the biggest impact and are easiest to implement. The strategies should be written into your plan as action points relating to particular objectives.

3. How will we know we have improved?

Identify performance measures that will show progress in health and safety. This will enable you to track progress and evaluate your health and safety activity.

There are two main kinds of measures – outcome (or reactive) measures and process (or proactive) measures:

  • Outcome measures show what you have done in the past, eg:
  • the number of injuries
  • number of lost hours
  • injury severity
  • frequency rates.
  • Process measures show how well you are doing with your preventive or control activity. They are designed to reduce the number of injuries and hours lost to injuries. These measures could include:

Use both outcome and process measures. If you focus on outcome measures alone, it is too late to do prevention work, as the injuries have already occurred.

How to do it

Together with reviewing and evaluating workplace health and safety, planning will enable you to focus on continuous improvement.

Develop a plan that will address the issues raised in your review. Include:

  • clear objectives or goals that indicate the direction of your safety management programme
  • how you will achieve your objectives – including people, budget and date
  • targets – so you can track progress and tell if you are achieving the desired result.

The planning process is most effective when it involves consultation with both managers and workers. Remember:

  • Managers need to commit to implementing the plan, and allocate time and resources to implementation.
  • Workers can help to identify safety issues in your workplace and ensure that solutions are relevant and realistic.

Writing your plan

Write your objectives, strategies (with action points), measures and targets into an action plan. The more detailed your plan, the more likely you are to achieve the desired improvements.

When planning you need to:

  • identify goals – these are usually activities or controls designed to eliminate, isolate or minimise factors causing injury or illness
  • determine the resources needed – time, money, people, skills, knowledge
  • identify objectives – ensure that they are SMART:
  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time-bound
  • prioritise strategies
  • identify measures and targets
  • create an action plan detailing the specific steps needed to meet objectives.

Objectives

The objectives for your plan are the improvements you agreed on in step one of your planning process.

Often individual departments will identify different objectives, as there will be varying needs and systems at different levels of development. So there may be a number of specific objectives.

For example, a company objective could read:

‘By 30 June, we will have trained at least 150 workers in hazard identification and management.’

But the objective for the Production Department could read:

‘By 30 June, the Production Manager will have trained a minimum of 25 workers in hazard identification and management.’

Actions

Once you have written your objectives, you will need to note action points under each objective. There may be a number of actions listed against one objective.

Your action plan should include:

  • Process – how will you implement the actions?
  • People – who is responsible for implementing actions?
  • Budget – how much will the actions cost?
  • Date – when will the actions be completed by?

Set targets

Set targets that represent the level of performance you want to reach.

This table shows an example of what you could do:

Measure
Target

Number of workers inducted in health and safety

By 31August this year, all new workers will have completed health and safety induction training within two weeks of their starting date

Injury and near-hit investigations

By 31July this year, all injuries will have been investigated within 48 hours and all near-hits investigated within four working days

Number of requirements in the ACC Workplace Safety Management Practices programme

By 31December this year, we will meet the requirements for the primary level of ACC Workplace Safety Management Practices

Number of lost time injuries

By 30June this year, the number of lost time injuries will have reduced by 30% compared with the previous year

Review progress

Reviewing your progress by:

  • ensuring that planned activities have been carried out
  • checking you have met targets
  • checking you have successfully reduced the number and cost of injuries.

What to review

  • Action points set out in your action plan
  • Targets specified in your action plan – these are likely to include number, severity and cost of injuries
  • All health and safety plans – including strategic and action plans
  • Data specified in your plan targets – eg injury data, number of early reports, number of near-hits, training records, audits of health and safety systems and practices

Tools available

We’ve put together two examples of health and safety improvement plans.

Example one is an improvement plan with the objective of reaching the secondary level of ACC Workplace Safety Management Practices. Download this example in one of the formats below:

Example two is a health and safety plan with the objective of achieving the primary level of the ACC Workplace Safety Management Practices programme.

Download this example in one of the formats below:

Last updated: 20April2009