Monitoring, reporting and assurance

Every high-quality health and safety system features a robust process for reporting on all aspects of the system, including your school’s approach to hazard and risk management.

Monitoring health and safety at your school will ensure your board stays on track, complies with the law, and, most importantly, reduces incidents.

Schools promote a commitment to continuously improving health and safety performance by having a coordinated system to track the performance of their health and safety systems.

Keep reading to learn more.

What is a PCBU?

A PCBU is a “person conducting a business or undertaking”, usually a legal or corporate entity.

In the case of a kura or school, the board is the PCBU, and the board members are officers of the PCBU.

As board members (and officers of the PBCU), you have considerable influence over ensuring that everything reasonably practicable is done to keep everyone healthy and safe.

The role of the PCBU is a crucial role defined by the law.

Your board must ensure it has the information needed to monitor the performance of the workplace health and safety system.

The leadership team, health and safety representatives, and health and safety committee may all contribute to providing information on the system’s performance to your board.

Your board needs to budget resources that allow staff to effectively undertake the appropriate internal audits and monitoring, data analysis, and reporting.

It is your responsibility to ask questions that provide you with the assurance that these systems are in place, are being followed appropriately, and are working.

Through this process of reporting and scrutinising the information, you can meet your due diligence obligations as officers of the PCBU and implement a continuous improvement process.

What are monitoring, reporting, and quality assurance?

Controlling health and safety risks in the workplace is an ongoing process that needs to take into account changes in the workplace.

Procedures and risk controls must be reviewed regularly to ensure they are still effective.

Your board must review and, if necessary, revise the control measures.

Monitoring, reporting, and quality assurance are key to ensuring every aspect of a workplace health and safety system operates effectively.

Identifying key health and safety performance indicators should be included in regular internal evaluations across all school sites and Education Outside the Classroom (EOTC) activities.

The health and safety key performance indicators could be generated through strategic objectives or measured against established external standards and audit benchmarks.

For example – reduction in the severity and prevalence of bullying behaviours in the students and/or staff.

An agreed monitoring system that includes a hazard registeropen_in_new with near misses and key performance indicators of success will support the internal evaluation process.

Staff must understand each category measure so risk identification and measurement are consistent over time and among staff members, providing quality assurance.

The board must be clear about what it wants to be monitored and reported in its policies.

What is quality assurance of workplace health and safety systems?

A workplace health and safety system can be quality-assured through internal and external audits and review processes.

Health and safety audits are an essential part of the quality assurance system as they help to identify weaknesses in a workplace health and safety system, including areas of non-conformance.

A sound health and safety system enables your board’s compliance with statutory requirements.

By implementing an audit process with measurable standards, your board will be better placed to protect its workers from accidents and subsequent downtime.

The internal and external audits should be carried out against a set of audit standards.

The outcomes of the audit should identify areas of non-conformance and make recommendations on improvements that can be made to the health and safety system.

Why is setting up a health and safety committee a good idea?

Setting up a health and safety committee is one way to fulfil your monitoring responsibilities.

Typically, a health and safety committee brings together workers and management to develop and review health and safety policies and make recommendations to the board.

What is a risk register?

Keeping a risk register is not a legal requirement but an excellent way to record and share information among board members.

There are many useful models available to boards.

Using a risk register that ranks risk based on likelihood is a good idea so that anything assessed as having an extreme risk is immediately reported to the board for action.

How can you create the right health and safety culture?

Creating a safety-conscious culture within your school involves clarifying what you want to achieve and ensuring all your systems and processes support that aim.

One way to do this is to ensure:

Health and safety, including staff and student wellbeing, is a regular item on your school board agenda,
Emotional and physical wellbeing is embedded into your school’s strategic planning, and
Having the right policies and procedures to identify, monitor and report concerns or incidents.

What are key performance indicators?

Performance indicators are essential management tools for measuring the performance of a workplace health and safety system.

The system should use lead and lag indicators for effective performance measurement but with a greater weighting on lead indicators.

Lead indicators are important because they measure activities designed to prevent harm and manage and reduce risk.

They are focused on future safety performance.

Lag indicators, on the other hand, measure past performance results and indicate facts about past events.

They indicate progress toward compliance with health and safety legislation and regulations.

Examples of lead performance indicators

Effective staff training on aspects of health and safety.
Regular wellbeing surveys for staff and students.
Promotion of safe working culture.

Examples of lag performance indicators

Stronger employer/employee relationships.
Lower injury, illness, and sick pay costs.
Reduction in severity of student and staff incidents.

Questions your board could ask

What systems are in place to ensure that hazards and risks (including risks to worker health and wellbeing) are identified, assessed and effectively managed?
How well can the school’s emergency management plan and state of readiness ensure an effective response to any potential emergency? When was it last tested?
Are you asking the right questions?
Do you determine what information you receive, or does management?
How do you know that a strong and honest reporting culture supports the information you receive?
How much of the information you receive is shared with workers and their representatives?
Are you receiving sufficient information about health, wellbeing, and safety?
How do you ensure an appropriate and thorough board-level review of health and safety?
How do you recognise and celebrate successes?

Templates, resources, and references

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