Live Blog: EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA - A Look at Crisis & Risk Communications

Sandy Skees, Principal Consultant at BSI, spoke about risk communications at EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA. In her talk she touched upon the use of appealing to emotion (e.g., familiarity, empathy) when communicating time-sensitive crisis information, as this can help one commit the information to memory and react in a positive manner. She also stressed the importance of preparing communications in advance, be it text messages, emails, tweets, etc., so that one can quickly respond to questions that come in during an incident. Another important point of emphasis was the need for consistent feedback loops: making sure you receive feedback whenever you release a communication to ensure that the right message comes across.

Skees' overall guiding principles of crisis & risk communications:

o   Be first

o   Be right

o   Be credible

o   Express sympathy

o   Promote action

o   Show respect

Live Blog: EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA - Highlighting Kaiser Permanente's CIRAS System for Risk Management and Incident Analysis

Dang Nguyen, Senior Manager of EH&S at Kaiser Permanente, gave a presentation today at EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA on the hospital group's implementation of technology into their risk management and incident analysis procedures. Nguyen highlighted Kaiser Permanente's native CIRAS system (Comprehensive Incident Reporting and Analysis System), which ties together risk management, cause-effect mapping, and internal reporting into a single comprehensive system. He pointed out that while most organisations use Excel for their process and cause-effect mapping, CIRAS has a more user-friendly user graphic user interface which ties directly to an internal database of risks and actions/conditions that can lead to incidents, including environmental factors, equipment factors, procedure factors, and human factors. Nguyen stated that moving forward, the next steps to achieving user-friendliness in their system is replacing safety industry jargon with "plainspeak" and generally improving software training for employees.

Live Blog: EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA - Cause-Effect Mapping Techniques for Improved Incident Analysis

Kaiser Permanente EHS representatives Shari Samuels and Teodoro Millon gave a talk today at EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA about how cause-effect mapping can be used to improve incident analysis and reduce recurrence. The duo stressed the importance of asking "Why?" when conducting incident analysis. Samuels demonstrated how process maps and cause-effect maps can be used in conjunction to identify particular issues within organisational procedures that lead to incidents. She also criticised the blame culture a lot of organisations exhibit and called for professionals to avoid generalisations such as ending investigations once blame has been established, be it human error or not following procedure; these errors are not explanations, she said - they demand them.