December 28, 2017
I thought I’d try a Christmas themed series of blog posts this year, but I’m not sure I realised that The Twelve Days of Christmas carol actually has 78 items in it and then I rather wished I hadn’t started – but anyway, here goes... (you’ll have to imagine the singing, my singing is not suitable for public consumption!)
On the 1st day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 1 reason why:
On the 2nd day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 2 ways of identifying interested parties:
- Key process technique – look at your key processes, who are the interested parties at each stage of the process?
- Impact technique – which interested parties are going to have the greatest impact on your business?
On the 3rd day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 3 things to put in a policy:
- The descriptive bit e.g. we are a consultancy providing bespoke advice to a wide range of businesses in the South West across health, safety, environmental and quality disciplines…
- The commitments bit or policy statements you want to make e.g. we are committed to identifying and managing risks in the workplace, we are committed to providing information, instruction and training, we are committed to complying with all relevant legal and compliance obligations…
- The management bit e.g. we are committed to continual improvement, we will review this policy every year to make sure it aligns with our strategic purpose…
On the 4th day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 4 things to consider when writing a scope statement:
- What do you do? What products and / or services do you provide?
- What internal and external issues do you need to consider?
- What requirements of interested parties do you need to consider?
- Should any part of your products / services / sites be excluded? (NB you can’t just exclude something because it is easier!)
On the 5th day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 5 steps to carry out a simple risk assessment:
- Look for the hazards i.e. something that might cause harm)
- Who could be harmed by these hazards?
- Think about the level of risk, how likely is it that someone could be harmed and how serious could it be?
- Decide what control measures you need to reduce the risk and implement them
- Record and review your findings
On the 6th day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 6 prompt words to complete a SWOT analysis:
- Political
- Economical
- Social
- Technological
- Legal
- Environmental
On the 7th day of Christmas my consultant gave to me 7 quality management principles:
- Customer focus – to meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations
- Leadership – establish unity of purpose and engage people to achieve your company objectives
- Engagement of people – engage people at all levels within your company to create and deliver value
- Process approach – manage and understand activities as interrelated processes to achieve consistent results
- Improvement – ongoing focus on improvement (big or small, it doesn’t matter!)
- Evidence based decision making – analysing and evaluating relevant data before making decisions
- Relationship management – managing relationships with interested parties
Part 2 to follow on the 2nd January…