Hi All,
Leah here from CMSE Recruitment. Following on from my colleague Karen’s article about Competency vs behavioural interviews, I wanted to pop on the give you some info on the STAR method.
You may of my not have come across this previously but if not, let me give you a brief overview.
The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioural based interview question by discussing the following;
S – Specific situation.
Example: Sales revenue was falling.
T – Task.
Example: My goal was to generate new incentives, to result in a minimum 10% increase in sales.
A – Action.
Example: I arranged an event for clients who had not renewed advertising contracts.
R – Result.
Example: We re-signed contracts with 10 previous clients for advertising packages, which increased our sales by 15% over the same period the previous year.
Tips;
CMSE Recruitment specialises in the recruitment and placement of safety personnel across Environmental, Pharma, Medical Device, Fire Safety, Construction, Process Engineering and more.
If you’re interested in having a confidential chat about your career progression in EHS, contract or permanent roles please contact the CMSE Recruitment team at 0818 315 415 or [email protected]
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What is a Risk Assessment?
A Risk Assessment is where an employer writes down any hazards or risks which could cause harm to people in the workplace and what control measures can be done or precautions could be taken to prevent harm. The overall aim of Risk Assessment is to reduce the risk of injury and illness associated with work.
A Risk Assessment comprises of three steps;
Step 1 is identifying hazards
Step 2 is the assessment of risks
Step 3 is putting control measures in place.
What’s a Hazard? A hazard is anything with the potential to cause harm in terms of human injury or ill health, including; · work materials, · equipment, · work methods or practices, · poor work design · exposure to harmful agents such as chemicals, noise or vibration. | What’s a Risk? A risk is the likelihood that somebody will be harmed by the hazard and how serious the harm might be. The number of people at risk from the hazard should also be considered when you think of Risk. |
Under Section 19 of the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, every employer is required to identify hazards in their workplace. In addition, the employer must assess the risk from identified hazards and have a written risk assessment of the risks as they apply to persons exposed to them in the workplace.
The HSA outlines that Risk Assessments must:
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CMSE Consultancy undertake many different types of risk assessments across many sectors from general workplace assessments and task risk assessment to specialist areas such as ergonomic, chemical agents, fire, machinery, confined space and ATEX.
Risk assessments are conducted in conjunction and consultation with your onsite representatives to ensure the quality and validity of the risk assessment as well as raising health and safety awareness with your personnel.
Your CMSE Consultant can provide risk assessments systems, formats and templates for use at your organisation. Site specific training programmes can also be developed and delivered to meet your organisations requirements.
Do you have a question about the Risk Assessments?
Record management is an essential element when it comes to training your employees. Having accurate & efficient record management assists in making your learning management system audit compliant. Defining record management can be vast but capturing and maintaining a foundation for an organisation is crucial. Teams rely on information and data to help them work effectively and to build the knowledge for themselves and the organisation as a whole. Security and GDPR compliance also come into play regarding record management for your LMS. Organisations must ensure the storage of documentation, certification and attendance of employees is secure and easily accessible to platform administration.
The SAFEWARE Team have compiled a list of benefits of keeping your record management in toe for 2021.
It might be time to do a review of goods coming and going from your site. Is anything classified as a dangerous good?
Do you know, transporting dangerous goods, isn’t just the transport on a truck or in a van, but also includes the role of:
Furthermore, the people involved in these activities have legal responsibilities.
As well as national legislation on the carriage of dangerous goods, we also have the ADR. ADR is an agreement between United Nations countries to harmonise transport conditions for dangerous goods, to prevent accidents and reduce risks. It’s updated every two years and specifies how to classify dangerous goods and also the requirements for their transport. Dangerous goods are classified into:
Class 1: Explosive
Class 2.1: Flammable Gas, 2.2. Non Flammable, Non Toxic Gas, 2.3 Toxic Gas.
Class 3: Flammable Liquid
Class 4.1: Flammable Solid, 4.2 Spontaneously Combustible Substance, 4.3 Substance which emits flammable gas in contact with water.
Class 5.1: Oxidising Substance, 5.2 Organic Peroxide.
Class 6.1: Toxic Substance, 6.2 Infectious Substance
Class 7: Radioactive Material
Class 8: Corrosive Substance
Class 9: Miscellaneous Dangerous Substances.
There are a number of things you can do initially.
Waste is not exempt. Chemical and other waste can be classified as dangerous goods. If you are delegating some responsibilities to your waste provider, you should have a Contract of Carriage in place. You can delegate some responsibilities but not all.
If you are accepting, unloading or loading then you are involved in their transport. You might even have requirements around the transport of empty containers, depending on what material was last in them.
Even a single package of dangerous goods might fall under the Regulations but you must check. There are different requirements for limited or excepted quantities with specific conditions.
The cost of a mistake could be huge. Consider what could happen if you don’t follow the ADR, package something incorrectly, load it with a material that it’s incompatible with or if there was a road accident and no-one knew there was a dangerous good on-board. You have a moral, financial and legal responsibility to comply.
If you would like a review of your activities or other DGSA support, please contact the CMSE Consultancy Team
Chat to us instantly by clicking the chat box in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Alternatively, you can click here to email [email protected]
Leadership in COVID-19 time is more important than ever!
While it was unusual to attend the Health and Safety Review Conference online this year, we certainly agreed strongly with the central theme of the event this year – safety leadership is more important than ever. The event theme focused on the challenges of working during the current pandemic and how it is essential for leaders within an organisation to maintain a positive safety culture. These are indeed strange times for many organisations. Many employees continue to work under infection prevention regimes, while many others work from home, physically isolated from the normal workplace environment and their colleagues. We should not forget people in certain more affected sectors who are concerned about their future as employers face continuing commercial uncertainty.
During the conference Neil Lenehan, HSQE Manager for Irish Water, delivered a presentation on implementing an effective H&S strategy, and provided an insight into the Irish Water journey in safety and the importance of vision, strategy and leadership during the COVID-19 era. Irish Water’s ‘Work Safe Home Safe’ framework is based on 5 key pillars to building a safety culture within an organisation:
These pillars facilitated the organisation to navigate through their COVID-19 journey and the obstacles of the new homeworking situation. When Neil was asked by a participant how an organisation can ensure people will continue to be motivated when working from home, he outlined how an employee’s mental health as the leading concern. He recommended engagement with workers through increased social contact, and not just to discuss work but to simply ask your employees “how are you?”.
This simple message certainly resonated with us in relation to our own team, who like many have effectively been working from home since early March. While large organisations can have teams, plans and programmes to address safety, mental health and well being for employees, it is key for leaders at all levels, and in organisations and teams of all sizes, to do the small, simple things that will make a difference. This can be as simple as a regular call from a team lead to have a chat and see how things are going and listen to the employee’s concerns. Across organisations there will be a wide range of home circumstances in which employees find themselves. Homeworking for a prolonged period can lead to a sense of isolation or loneliness in employees. There is mounting evidence that there is a drop in the mental and physical health of employees as a whole from prolonged home working.
A duty of care of exists on employers to ensure their employees’ ‘place of work’ is safe and suitable. A good approach to monitoring an employees’ health and safety at home is through a homeworking assessment. The assessment considers both the working environment and work equipment. It examines posture and behaviours to mitigate musculoskeletal discomfort and strain. Employees appreciate the assessments, and it is a clear statement that an employer wants to ensure employees are comfortable and well setup for working at home.
Leadership is about setting people up for success. Employees need the physical tools for effective and productive home working, but they also need an environment that is supportive, where leaders display empathy and where there are supports available when required. Engaging with employees, ensuring that the remote working situation is not negatively impacting their health and wellbeing is a proactive and positive step in the duty of care for employees – it will reap due reward.
During these uncertain times, communication, engagement, and visual commitment in safety leadership is more important than ever. We are working with employers to provide support for their employees in this COVID-19 era and you would like to talk about safety leadership, homeworking assessments or ergonomic programmes please contact the CMSE Consultancy team.
Chat to us instantly by clicking the chat box in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Alternatively, you can click here to email [email protected]
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