Health & Safety Organizational Structures and Authority

Health & safety (H&S) organizations that serve complex plant and field operations face increasingly difficult challenges to their mission. Economic conditions have caused budget cutbacks and diminished staffing resources for H&S support functions, even as senior management seeks to curb workplace injury rates and other safety-related metrics that cause productivity losses.

Key Topics
This 13-page document will give H&S executives insights on maintaining consistent implementation and compliance for safety standards across businesses. It also describes how to transform those standards into actionable and relevant policies for particular operational aspects of business units and facilities.

Sample Best Practices
1. Position H&S authority in a centralized body to ensure a focus on independent stewardship of safety across the company and high-level standards development.
- One benchmark partner has a manager of H&S for each power generation department who reports into a corporate organization to ensure that the departmental H&S managers communicate frequently with each other and maintain a consistent approach to implementing new standards.

2. Position H&S in decentralized organizations at the business unit and operations level to gain buy-in from line management and personnel.
- Within one company, some H&S groups are responsible for functional areas across business units, while others are solely responsible for limited oversight within single business units.

3. Designate corporate H&S personnel as consultants to field H&S personnel and line managers to define client expectations and create effective working relationships.
- At one benchmarked company, three staff members ensure that communication, trust and relationship building is consistent across business units.

Methodology
This research presents findings from benchmarking interviews on organizational structures and authority in Health & Safety organizations of 10 companies. The research originated from a Best Practices, LLC research and consulting project.

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