What do you do and say in the next staff meeting after a serious accident?
We recently had a safety incident in our laboratory that was serious enough to require the evacuation of a building and calling in emergency personnel. Thankfully we had no serious injuries, lost days, or damage to facilities.
Yet, it could have been worse. The post-incident interviews indicated several clear problems in our emergency response. There likely are other things that we can learn from the incident. I need everyone to know I am grateful that they are alive and that I never want this to happen again.
I need the discussion to avoid finger-pointing and focus on making the team stronger and safer in the future. I can put these two items in as ground rules when we have that time in the agenda.
What has worked for people and what has not?
Ed
WWW TALA?
Caveat: Not speaking from experience. My team develops software, and we don't have that sort of emergency.
Nonetheless, a "Hotwash" ( http://www.manager-tools.com/2006/02/feb-2006-members-podcast-the-hot-wash ) has techniques for focusing on both the things that went well and those that could be improved. You want to do more of what worked, and it's a good way of keeping the discussion on doing the right things, not just on fixing things.
FWIW, disaster preparedness drills rarely run smoothly; we've never had one go perfectly. Live and learn.
Glad to hear everyone's OK. That is the most important thing...
John Hack
don't wait
I have recently changed industries, financial to industrial (smelting and refining) one thing that took getting used to was the focus on safety. It is a focus on everything we do.
It sounds like your concerns may be significant enough that you don't wait for a regular scheduled meeting. You might make more of an impact if you address things sooner in a special meeting. If the incident investigation is done and you feel you have concerns it is time to take action. How would you feel if you waited three or four days for your next meeting, and had another incident while waiting.
Our corrective action process has strict guidelines that require action to be taken with specified time lines of an incident. This also helps deal with those people who like to focus on the analysis and delay the action phase.
If thing are serious, act soon and use the sense of urgency as a of communicating your concern for the safety of others.
Agreed
Hot wash + acting immediately while it's still a fresh issue. Both of those.
We work with chainsaws semi-regularly here and had a very unpleasant accident last year. We also had response issues, but mostly because cellphones don't always work in our remote location.
A lot of stuff also went right... and the Hot Wash will help find that.
Good suggestions
Thanks for the feedback. I can't believe I missed the Hot Wash podcast as I listen to almost every one. I would have remembered it if I had heard it.
It is an appropriate format and it worked well. It was a little more polished than what I had in mind but along the same lines. Quick! Get the good and the needs improvement.
In answer to the other questions. Fortunately the fire was related to an activity that we can and have shut down until the SOP can be reviewed. We have regular weekly staff meetings and it is the fastest way to get everyone together. Because of the holidays we were not able to get everyone in one spot the day afterward but we are still within the week framework. It is still urgent but less raw.
The piece that still seems open is rebuilding team trust and defusing the natural tendency among peers on the team to assign blame.
Any thoughts?
Ed
Business Continuity
I've spent 5 years doing Business Continuity and IT service continuity. It sounds like you did the first thing suggested after an event which is to review in a facilitated manner what went right and what could be improved on. Make sure all those items and suggestions get back into your business continuity plans and that everyone receives an updated copy. To rebuild trust it would be good to schedule a couple exercises of the plans to reinforce that everyone is aware of the procedures and more importantly, that they perform them as second nature. You can do a 'table top' exercise quarterly with everyone in a conference room for a couple hours. Set up a scenario and let people talk through what they would do as time progresses. Assign some people to be 'absent' (but still in the meeting) on that day so people have to take on roles they are not used to. Have someone not involved be a scribe to take down any suggestions that come up. Once a year, actually have people exercise the plan including evacuation. The trust should return because everyone knows that they have had the same experience in supporting each other thru an event. If your company has a continuity group, they should be working with you on this already.
Business Continuity
Thanks for the follow up. It working better than I expected. In the past, we have had annual fire drills, bi-annual safety training and monthly safety updates. Following the hot-wash, we conducted walk-throughs based on the suggestions of the staff. They have been the most effective safety sessions in the lab since I started as a manger in the group. It is coming from the staff rather than the management and that has made all the difference. We have a new lab safety manager (he started a few months before the fire). He feels the staff have given him a mandate to to make things better and it is great to see. I will work with to see if your suggestions are useful to him in his plans.
Thanks,
Ed