direction (e.g. replace verbal procedures and agreements with written documentation) or assign responsibility (e.g. for material safety data sheet collection and storage) to one person.
Finally, an opinion report can provide the relative degree to which compliance is met by subject area, and include phrases indicating that the facility is “wholly,” “substantially,” or “minimally” in conformance.
It is often helpful to include a one‐page executive summary at the beginning of the report to apprise upper management of the overall status of the facility and any significant recommendations. It is common for the audit report to be delivered in draft form to ensure that the information is accurate and that the format and style are consistent with past agreements. Once the draft has been revised by the audit team, a final report is issued. Whatever format is chosen for the final report, it should be clearly stated prior to the initiation of the audit.
8.6 Postaudit Actions
Following the audit, a plan of action to address any deficient areas must be established. It is increasingly common for the audit findings to be entered into a tracking system that will facilitate resolution. The action plan for audit findings and resolution should include identification of the person accountable for resolution and the expected completion date. For complex issues, a detailed action plan may be needed with numerous components, that include consideration of necessary resources, both financial and personnel. When a robust tracking system is used, it can keep the original spirit of the audit alive by permitting periodic status reports to be forwarded to management. Statistics detailing percent of serious deficiencies corrected and remaining items sorted by priority and deadline provide a tangible measuring stick for facility administrators.
When MS are audited, the postaudit period provides an opportunity to evaluate potential deficiencies in the overall system. There is value in performing a root cause analysis of each audit finding to see if the finding occurred from a deficiency in some part of the system.
8.7 Use of Findings in Ongoing Improvement
Ultimately the results of any type of audit should provide feedback to the planning process. As part of the Check portion of the Deming/Shewhart PDCA cycle auditing provides the information to both take action on identified exposures and make permanent system improvements (9). Findings from monitoring and measurement, audits, incident investigations, and corrective and preventive actions need to consider corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
This same data should be summarized as part of the management review process to inform leadership and provide them with the opportunity to comment on planned responses and activities. Leadership support is often directly proportional to their involvement in the selection and deployment of corrective actions and system improvements.
9 LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
The advent of organizational management system ideas, approaches, frameworks, standards, etc. and their application to improving worker health is significant. OHSMS approaches provide industrial hygienists and OH&S professionals with a robust set of tools to integrate OH&S with business and operational processes. As well, they assist in strengthening professional competencies, and “new ways of thinking,” as suggested by Buckminster Fuller's quote,
“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking” (1).
Thinking connotes to “seeing.” Organizational MSs expand purview and what is seen. OHSMSs support seeing beyond an OH&S purview, but more broadly to the whole organization, and past its fence line (community, supply chains, environment, etc.).
The evolution of management system approaches includes not only stronger risk management focus, but also a focus on performance improvement opportunities. This shift in thinking, while seemingly small, has potentially large implications for industrial hygienists and OH&S professionals. Opportunity‐thinking and business process integration‐thinking provides a portal to make a larger contribution, for instance, in Enterprise Risk Management efforts and in designing “the workplace of the future.”
9.1 Generative Fields – System‐Thinking Evolution
Generative Social Fields (GSF) is a body‐of‐work that is evolving out of the systems‐thinking space. Field concepts have roots in physics with Michael Faraday's discovery of electromagnetism, as well as in the social sciences with Kurt Lewin's development of social field theories. A key distinction in this body of work is “interiority,” that is, the degree to which a person views themselves as part of a system, or part a field. Otto Scharmer describes this in Theory U as,
“What differentiates social fields from social systems is their degree of interiority. Social systems are social fields seen from the outside (the third‐person view). At the moment we cross the boundary between them and step inside a social system – that is, at the moment we begin to inquire into its interiority by turning the camera around (from the third‐person to the first‐person view) – we switch the perspective from the social system to the social field (79).”
This idea is abstract, but points to concepts familiar within OHSMSs such as accountability, integration, and opportunity.
9.2 The Future‐Ready Company
Numerous benefits of organizational management systems have been identified in this chapter. Possibly the most significant is possibility their impact in helping the organization be future‐ready. That is an organization that provides sustained value, makes positive impacts, and is risk resilient. Over time, after a MS has been implemented, systems thinking skills increase, and there is a shift in individual and group “interiority,” there is movement away from the gravitational pull of compliance mindsets that are historic in industrial hygiene and OH&S. With this, there are increased generative thinking, organizational learning, and continual improvement (80).
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