The Noggin Blog

As a Safety leader, you’ve probably built a strong portfolio in the organisation. So too has your counterpart in Security. And now both of you see key safety and security priorities, like keeping employees safe at work or mitigating threats to facilities and people, reflected at the highest levels.

Boards of Directors have weighed in. A staggering 60 percent of them believe that disruptive risks are “much more important” today than they were five years ago.

The value of an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), a physical (or mobile) hub where Emergency and Incident Management teams coordinate information and resources during low-frequency, high-risk incidents, is pretty clear. The EOC supports incident management activities, up to and including on-scene operations.

Safety incident reporting rates remain persistently low, despite the costs (measured in eventual safety incidents) being so high. The question for Safety teams is why, why are their safety reporting rates stuck in the doldrums?

Welcome to the new financial year. Already, we’ve heard great feedback on our Integrated Safety and Security platform, Noggin 2.0, which we’ve been demonstrating to consultants, customers, service partners, and prospects. So we’re more confident than ever that our new software will fill a need in the market.

In the last decade, Australia made serious strides to update its occupational health and safety regulations to the modern era. A pillar concept propounded by the safety policy makers who crafted the subsequent model Work Health and Safety Act: that principal duty holders (or PCBUs) have the primary responsibility for the health and safety of their workers and any other workers under their influence (e.g. contractors). 

Focus on physical security controls in ISO 27001

Serious about securing your valuable assets, digital as well as physical? Well, international standards prescribe baselines for securing those assets. The ISO 27001 information security management systems standard, in particular, focuses on securing information assets.

Safety reporting rates remain stubbornly low, especially in high-risk sectors, like construction, mining, shipping, etc. Taken alone, these low reporting rates would be reason enough for concern. Remember, chronic underreporting and the devaluing of near-miss analysis don’t conduce to creating a thriving safety culture. But underreporting safety incidents have major cost implications, too. Here’s the cost of underreporting safety incidents.

Airports have never been busier. But luckily, thanks to the professionalism of airport operators, traffic flows smoothly; passengers get processed efficiently; and the planes themselves come and go.

Conservative estimates of safety underreporting rates show the global total around 25 percent. That’s a full quarter of workplace incidents go underreported.