While interviewing a member of top management, you ask him to explain the process by...

Once we as top management have approved an OH and S objective, it is set and cannot be amended. Updating objectives is a sure route to chaos and confusion.

There is no need for us to take into account the results of our organisation’s risk and opportunities assessments when setting our OH and S objectives. All that matters is what has happened, not what might happen. We therefore focus on internal and external issues instead.

Once we have established our OH and S objectives, we pass them over to an external provider to monitor progress. They are a specialist OH and S consultancy company, much more experienced in OH and S performance measurement and independent too.

Where possible we try to make our OH and S objectives measurable. In some cases, however, we need to use professional judgement to determine whether the objective has been met.

Once we, as top management, approved the OH and S objectives, we did not define any action plan to achieve them, since the actions to be taken were discussed during a lunch we had with some of the managers.

We always try to consult with our workers before setting OH and S objectives. This means the process takes longer, but we have found workers feel greater ownership of the objectives as a result.

Once we established our OH and S objectives, we did not see the need to communicate them to workers, since workers’ representatives were consulted when they were set up.