COVER STORY
AN ENGAGING LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Risk management is essential to the sustainability of any organisation. Our two key courses, Managing Risk – The Essentials and Managing Health and Safety Risks – The Essentials, help individuals and teams develop the skills to manage risk effectively.
To keep our two key courses up to date and relevant for our increasingly international community, we recently refreshed them with new case studies and content.
Ruth Waring is the course leader on the Managing Health and Safety Risks – The Essentials course, which runs in a live, online environment over two days. The course was originally written to cover the range of health and safety legislation that applies to workplaces in the UK, but also considers that IIRSM has an international reach.
“That is how the International Institute for Safety and Risk Management (IIRSM) really differentiates itself,” said Ruth. “The extra ‘I’ in the name reflects the international audience. We don’t want to overly focus on UK legislation, which might not be relevant for everyone.
“When we are talking to some of IIRSM’s international community, the risks they might have to think about on a construction site might not just be working at height but also poisonous spiders!”
Last year, L’Oréal and IIRSM joined forces to create the successful L’Oréal Hummingbird Bursary to encourage greater representation among those responsible for managing risk at work.
Bursary recipients were carefully selected by a judging panel made up of representatives from leading organisations in occupational safety and health and risk management and took part in the Managing Health and Safety Risks – The Essentials course, with places funded by L’Oréal.
In a post-course evaluation, when asked how they would rate the level of content of the course, the participants all rated the trainer’s knowledge as ‘excellent’ and every participant stated that the course fully met their expectations.
“It was fantastic working with these international members of the IIRSM community,” said Ruth. “Many of whom wanted the ability to conduct a risk assessment, investigate an incident and set action plans as well as knowledge of the critical role of culture and people.”
There are some principles of health and safety risk that are relevant to any organisation, industry or location,
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IIRSM’s courses provide vital learning for managing risks across industry sectors, whether you’re working in a specific discipline or have responsibility for managing a variety of risks.
explained Ruth, including the fire triangle – a simple method of raising awareness of how and why fire can spread so quickly – and the hierarchy of risk controls.
With the newly refreshed Managing Health and Safety Risks course, we have updated the real-life case studies that are used to highlight the impact of events, along with video, discussion, group and reflective activities, so that participants’ can apply the theory to their own workplace scenarios.
One such example is the implosion of the Titan submersible last June. Operated by American tourism and expeditions company OceanGate, the Titan imploded during an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean. Despite warnings. OceanGate executives, including the CEO, had not sought certification for the Titan, arguing that excessive safety protocols and regulations hindered innovation.
Ruth said: “What we look at in this example is the psychology of what happened there. It is very interesting to discuss the way that the management of an organisation sets the tone when it comes to health and safety. It also shows the perils of ‘groupthink’, when a group of individuals reaches a consensus without critical reasoning and things get waved through without appropriate security.”
An additional topic for discussion is the creativity and innovation that can come from a diverse team. “Some leaders can be guilty of hiring in their own image,
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