Management walk-arounds
Samenvatting ‘Management walk-arounds: Lessons from the Gulf of
Mexico oil well blowout’
Many companies understand that good management requires senior managers to spend
time with front line workers. Some companies build into performance agreements for senior
managers a requirement that they conduct a certain number of such site visits each year.
The challenge is to make productive use of these visits, also when looking for safety
measures. Often, mistakes are made during these management walk-arounds:
Behaviours vs conditions
Managers often focus their informal auditing activities on checking that certain
conditions were as they should be, rather than checking on behaviours: this is a
common auditing preference. States or conditions are easier to audit, because they
are relatively unchanging. They await the arrival of the auditor and can be assessed
at a time of the auditor’s choosing. On the other hand, compliance with procedures,
especially where the behaviour is intermittent (= onderbroken), is much harder to
audit. The auditor needs to catch the behaviour at the time it is occurring. If the
auditor does not make a special effort to be present at relevant times the behaviour
will be missed. Conditions are thus much easier to catch than behaviours.
Concerned to interfere with what was going on
Managers often do not want to undermine the authority of the people working in
the workplace and do not want to doubt their professionalism.
Personal (conventional) safety risk vs process safety (major hazard risk)
Personal risks are high frequency, low consequence events (e.g. slips trips and falls)
and process risks (major hazard risks) are low frequency high consequence events
(e.g. explosions). It is important to recognize that, because process safety disasters
are rare, they do not contribute to workforce injury statistics on an annual basis.
That is why managers often focus on personal safety instead of process safety.
Management-by-wandering-around is a widely recognised and advocated (= bepleit)
activity. The link to lean is the so-called Gemba Walk:
Samenvatting ‘Management walk-arounds: Lessons from the Gulf of
Mexico oil well blowout’
Many companies understand that good management requires senior managers to spend
time with front line workers. Some companies build into performance agreements for senior
managers a requirement that they conduct a certain number of such site visits each year.
The challenge is to make productive use of these visits, also when looking for safety
measures. Often, mistakes are made during these management walk-arounds:
Behaviours vs conditions
Managers often focus their informal auditing activities on checking that certain
conditions were as they should be, rather than checking on behaviours: this is a
common auditing preference. States or conditions are easier to audit, because they
are relatively unchanging. They await the arrival of the auditor and can be assessed
at a time of the auditor’s choosing. On the other hand, compliance with procedures,
especially where the behaviour is intermittent (= onderbroken), is much harder to
audit. The auditor needs to catch the behaviour at the time it is occurring. If the
auditor does not make a special effort to be present at relevant times the behaviour
will be missed. Conditions are thus much easier to catch than behaviours.
Concerned to interfere with what was going on
Managers often do not want to undermine the authority of the people working in
the workplace and do not want to doubt their professionalism.
Personal (conventional) safety risk vs process safety (major hazard risk)
Personal risks are high frequency, low consequence events (e.g. slips trips and falls)
and process risks (major hazard risks) are low frequency high consequence events
(e.g. explosions). It is important to recognize that, because process safety disasters
are rare, they do not contribute to workforce injury statistics on an annual basis.
That is why managers often focus on personal safety instead of process safety.
Management-by-wandering-around is a widely recognised and advocated (= bepleit)
activity. The link to lean is the so-called Gemba Walk:
