Safety Management System (SMS): What It Is and Why Your Business Needs One
What is a Safety Management System?
A Safety Management System (SMS) is a structured, top-down and organisation-wide framework that helps businesses make better decisions around their daily operations.
Safety Management Systems usually comprise four key pillars: safety policy, safety risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion.
SMSs emphasise safety management (and Occupational Health and Safety Management (OSHA or H&S)) as being just as important as any other part of running a business.
Who uses Safety Management Systems?
SMSs are most common in high-risk industries such as aviation, maritime, energy (particularly nuclear) and construction –but they are also gaining prominence in other hazard-prone sectors like healthcare.
Regions and Industries with Safety Management System Laws
Some examples of SMS legislation include:
Aviation – SMSs are recognised worldwide by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA) and by service providers as standard. Since 2018, the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration has required commercial airlines to implement SMSs.
Rail – Some regions, such as the EU, require railway operators to use a functioning Safety Management System to ensure the safety of their overall operations.
Energy – Energy (particularly offshore operations and nuclear) is another sector that often requires strict SMSs. For instance, the UK-based HSE sees “safety management systems” as “crucial mechanisms in the delivery of safety” of offshore oil and gas.
Do you need a Safety Management System?
Systematic Safety Management Systems may be a legal requirement in some higher-risk industries, but they can be adapted by any sort of organisation that wants a more complete and holistic solution to occupational health and safety.
It’s worth noting that, for many industries and many regions, a formal Safety Management System may not be a legal requirement –though they can be a helpful tool in meeting your region’s occupational health and safety duties (such as the UK’s Health and Safety Act, the USA’s Aviation dministration, or the EU’s OSH standards).
What are the main pillars of a Safety Management System?
Most organisations split Safety Management Systems into four key topics:
Safety Policy
Safety Risk Management
Safety Assurance
Safety Promotion
If this all sounds pretty vague, don’t worry! We’ll break down these topics in the following sections.
SMS pillar #1 – Safety Policy
An organisation’s safety policy outlines its safety objectives and commitments to them. It should be set out by employers and accountable managers who are committed to improving the organisation’s safety culture. A safety policy should be clear, unequivocal, and achievable.
Safety Policy will normally be drafted by top management (who will be expected to lead by example). It is important, however, that senior management actively engages with relevant groups and personnel throughout the organisation. This may include health and safety managers and trade union reps.
Balancing top-down accountability with bottom-up engagement is a good way to encourage buy-in for the new safety system.
SMS pillar #2 – Safety Risk Management
Safety Risk Management is where the objectives of the Safety Policy become “on the ground” realities. This part will feel the most familiar if your organisation already has a health and safety process (particularly in the UK, where risk assessments are a legal requirement for most businesses).
In essence, Safety Risk Management involves:
Identifying hazards – Hazards can come from the environment (such as uneven ground), processes (such as manual handling), people (such as customers and clients), tools, machinery, and a variety of other sources.
Assessing the risks associated with a hazard – Risk is judged based on its severity and likelihood (ranging from risks that are “extremely improbable” and of “negligible” threat, to ones that are “frequent” and “catastrophic”). These assessments should form a formal “Risk Assessment”.
Continued Risk Control – You can’t eliminate all risk, but you can judge what risks are “acceptable” by using your risk assessments. If risks are not acceptable, you need to reduce or mitigate them. We’ll discuss some examples of risk mitigation later in this article.
SMS pillar #3 – Safety Assurance
Safety Assurance (SA) is the process of continued risk monitoring. It’s not uncommon for organisations to create risk assessments and then forget about them. Safety assurance highlights the importance of continuous checks, modifications and improvements of risk management solutions.
With Safety Assurance, it’s important to give your employees the tools they need to highlight and report risk. Dynamic Risk Assessments (which allow workers to create and modify risk assessments as they work) can be part of this.
More top-down audits and investigations can be part of this. Standards can easily slip over time, and former solutions can prove insufficient, so regular check-ins are important.
SMS pillar #4 – Safety Promotion & Safety Culture
Safety Promotion (or Safety Culture) focuses on promoting and improving safety management systems across your business or organisation.
Safety Promotion may include:
Formal training, like a course on dynamic risk assessments
Knowledge sharing, such as supporting more senior workers share lessons they’ve learnt, or providing a platform where workers can request improvements or note hazards.
Improvements to the safety culture. This may include taking time to explain new processes and why they’re important. You could also put up posters reminding workers of their responsibilities and who to go to if they have any concerns.
Remember, a lot of workers worry that “health and safety” might negatively affect their efficiency. An important part of Safety Culture, therefore, is reminding staff that these ideas and practices matter, and are worth taking time on –and that they won’t be penalised for sticking to them.
Safety Management Software and Technology
How you implement your safety management system will depend on your organisation, your type of work, and how you operate.
As you go through the Safety Management process, however, you may find that both the system itself –and the issues it highlights– may require new technological investments.
None of the SMS guidelines will specify that organisations require a certain solution. It’s up to you to figure out what investments are right for you.
Safety Management Software –communication and documentation
As mentioned, communication and documentation are vital parts of a successful Safety Management System.
It’s important to provide user-friendly, dependable ways for workers to highlight hazards, discuss risks, and understand the latest organisational guidance.
When using technologies to complement your Safety Promotion, try to find a solution that works for both workers and management. For instance, if your workers all chat via group texts, you may find that communication levels are high, but that important information can easily be lost.
With simple, no-cost or low-cost communication tools like Slack or Teams, you can set up specific channels for workers to share important safety information, and tag the relevant managers.
You may want to go a step further and seek out a professional, dedicated “Safety Management Software” which can organise your safety documents, allow users to document hazards from an app, and access relevant safety information.
Safety Management Software –SOS and alarm monitoring
No matter what steps you take, work can never be made 100% risk-free.
If you have mitigated all the risks flagged in your assessment, provided good training and necessary PPE, and fostered a healthy Safety Culture, you may still be concerned about what happens when a genuine dangerous incident occurs.
Safepoint provides solutions for workers that are in higher-risk roles who may need to call for help or raise the alarm. In this, we are uniquely positioned to talk about solutions for at-risk workers –particularly those who work alone, late at night, with the public, in remote areas, or with hazardous equipment.
In this section, we’ll talk about how SOS devices, live location monitoring, and smart building technologies can work to keep workers safe in and out of the workplace.
SOS apps and Devices
If your staff work alone –whether they’re driving, on the street, in an office or factory, or in a remote location– their level of risk is increased.
The UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and some parts of Europe and Canada, all have specific “lone worker” legislation that reflects this extra risk. Some sectors and regions in the USA also have specific legislation protecting those who work alone. For instance, several states have laws requiring hotel cleaning staff to be equipped with SOS devices.
Safepoint provides two main SOS solutions for workers:
A wearable SOS device –The “Safepoint Lone Worker Device” is a lightweight but sturdy device that comes with a 5-day battery, multi-network SIM card, and two-way “instant connect” voice chat. If there’s an issue, a worker presses the SOS button and is connected with a trained safety agent.
An SOS and safety monitoring app – The “Safepoint Lone Worker App” utilises a worker’s own phone to provide smart SOS options, but also live safety monitoring. Not only can a worker use it in the case of an emergency, but they can also share their jobs with their managers in real-time. This is helpful for businesses that need to keep track of a larger workforce. It even provides a full historical log of who worked on what jobs and where.
Note: providing a dedicated SOS device is not a replacement for risk assessments, training or hazard mitigation –but should be seen as an important safety net for those who are still at risk despite taking all these steps.
Personal alarms and “smart buildings”
When people think about working alone, they often imagine “working remotely”. While many lone workers (such as agricultural workers, delivery drivers, utilities workers, etc.) do indeed work in remote locations, many work indoors.
When working on your Safety Management System, it is important to consider isolated staff who work indoors, as well as out. Some examples include:
Care workers doing the night shift in a care home.
Cleaning staff in large hotels
Admin staff working late in corporate offices
Factory and warehouse workers (who may be working late and/or with machinery)
Those who work underground or in areas with buildings with low connectivity
In these examples, a staff member may be “on site” in their normal workplace, and yet may still be at higher-risk of injury or hazard. When you’ve tried to mitigate every risk to the best of your ability, you should think about how a staff member would raise the alarm in the case of an emergency.
Safepoint have worked with many companies to provide more intelligent safety to their premises. Not only do we equip workers with SOS devices and apps, we also provide tailored alarm-positioning systems that can help provide faster, more accurate responses.
In the case of hotel cleaners (who face proportionally high rates of assault), we have not only provided wearable SOS devices, but also hotel-wide location beacons. These beacons help us pinpoint the exact room an alarm has come from (such as “Floor 5, Room 501”) and allow us to send an expedited emergency response.
Similarly, by implementing a Beacon and wifi network, we were able to provide comprehensive safety support across a large, remote, multi-building warehousing site.
Not only were we able to break up the site into manageable zones, but we were also able to digitally flag hazards, so we would know if an alarm was triggered near a piece of dangerous machinery, for example.
Embracing these new technologies can play an important role in providing much-needed emergency support to your staff. If you’re concerned about how your company could manage a true emergency situation, talk to us about our SOS alarms, safer-building solutions, and 24/7 safety monitoring.
Safety Management Systems in a nutshell
If you’re committed to organisational safety, a Safety Management System may be for you.
Safety Management Systems are best for larger and more complex organisations, but the lessons can benefit institutions of all sizes. Focusing on continuously evolving risk management, and baking in safety as part of your company’s culture is always smart.
In this article, we hope we’ve given you a clear overview of Safety Management Systems and how threat-to-life and point-of-emergency tools such as SOS alarms and location beacons can play a role.
If you want to discuss how SOS devices, live safety monitoring, emergency response processes and other emergency management tools can work with your Safety Management System, get in touch!