A recent benchmark survey by Best Practices, LLC identifies these tactics embedded in companies' winning health and safety management strategies:

  • Coordinated strategies and processes — Best practices companies seek to create common health and safety philosophies, strategies and processes. They coordinate key strategies and activities through a centralized oversight department, such as corporate health and safety. Specifically, organizations coordinate company health and safety standards objectives, basic training design and requirements and performance metrics through a central health and safety function.

    Companies also recognize that business units have unique health and safety differences and allow individual units and plants to focus health and safety efforts within corporate guidelines.

  • Health and safety centers of expertise — Top companies create centralized centers of expertise to coordinate strategies and processes. Typically employees staffed to expertise groups have specialized health and safety qualifications, sit at the corporate and global business unit levels and report to a senior executive at corporate headquarters. Health and safety expertise groups create the company’s health and safety philosophy and strategy, communicate specific standards, design company training modules, use technology to make important health and safety information globally accessible and consult regularly with business units.

    Central centers of health and safety expertise help to avoid duplication of efforts, drive a health and safety culture, provide a central location for health and safety performance results and promote global thinking.

  • Technology-driven health and safety awareness — Health and safety awareness is driven through e-learning, standardized workstations, corporate intranets and computerized best practices and hazard incident databases. Technology allows companies to maintain central controls on important health and safety activities, such as training and measurements, while pushing information to the entire company to build health and safety awareness.

    "Best Practices in Health and Safety Management," from Best Practices, LLC, a research and consulting firm, is profiled in a free summary online at http://www3.best-in-class.com/rr555.htm.