About Safety Management System Elements

Workplace accidents are a common occurrence. As a result, safety precautions are essential for both employee protection and compliance with state laws governing workplace safety. The term “safety management system,” or “SMS,” refers to a set of organized procedures and methods for handling workplace safety concerns. These include organizational structure, policies, accountabilities, and procedures (Reese, 2015). Every service provider and organization must create an SMS in accordance with ICAO regulations, which is not only approved but also monitored by the State where the business is located. This assignment will discuss objective evidence of various SMS elements in Coca-Cola Company, evaluate company’s effectiveness to implement the elements against available sources and best practice information.

Best practice Information and Objective Evidence Management System Elements

Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OSH MS)

Best Practice Information

OSH MS involves the management of and inspections of technical problems, behavioral, human and also organizational issues. The system helps an organization to gradually improve its compliance and safety performance to safety and health standards and legislation. Through various coordination, the system establishes a safer operating environment that protects the workers by better managing and eliminating safety and health hazards. Multiple features determine the effectiveness of OSH MS in an organization. Among the highlights involves the commitment of the top management to manage OHS risks through the demonstration of OHS leadership and promotion of the staff involved in implementation and development of OSH MS.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

The long-term success of the company is depended upon its safety culture, the safety of the workers, its visitors and the entire public. The management states that healthy and safe workplace is key to the business imperative and everyone affected. There are various policies put in place to minimize accident risks, exposure to an injury by health hazards for all the contractors and associates. The top management collaborates with their bottling partners to reduce risks for all the contract workers and their employees. OSH MS in the company is the highest standard and OHS performance hence rated as a World Class.

Occupational Health and Safety Policy

Best Practice Information

The top management of every organization should establish a document outlining its OHS policies. The policies should be tailored towards the needs of the company, written in understandable language and its statement be believable. It should state the position of the company on the environment, safety, and health, and indicate its values of protecting the public and workers against injuries and illness as a result of its operations and products sold.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

The corporation is firmly committed to ensuring that all its business activities are conducted with the utmost respect and integrity for the environment, the society, and its workers. Various policies in place are health and wellness policy, anti-bribery and compliance handbook policies, climate change and environment policies, code of business conduct, fleet safety policy, and GMO position statement. Additionally, the company has HIV/Aids and Human right policies to create awareness and ensure equality. The company committedly submits its OHS performance report policies in the annual Integrated Report. All these policy documents are signed by top management officials including Dimitris Lois. The rating of this element is in the strong tier. It is complete, but there have been complaints from customers of additives in the soft drinks. A recommendation for the improvement would be to provide transparency in nutrition information (Gade, 2016).

Responsibility and Authority

Best Practice Information

The management of a company should assign authority and responsibilities, define roles, establish accountability with consequences and also provide the fundamental human and financial resources for safety, health, and environment.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

According to the 2016 safety records of Coca-Cola, the company actively emphasizes on working to mitigate conditions and behaviors among the employees that may contribute to severe injuries. The Public Issues and Diversity Committee, currently under David Weinberg, works hand in hand with the audit committee to ensure responsibility oversight to health, safety, environmental issues that may affect the operations and workers in the company. The element is rated a World Class.

Employee Participation

Best Practice Information

All the employees in an organization have a right and responsibility to take part in every aspect of OHS MS with the provision of time, resources, and mechanisms to participate fully. The company improves its prevention efforts once it gets to recognize employees’ creativity who have the skills, experience, and knowledge of the risks and hazards due to interaction levels with the same.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

Coca-Cola promotes safety culture which in return encourages her employees; participation. The Coca-Cola Operating Requirements(KORE) provides guidelines through which safe work environment to all employees and associates is achieved including employee participation in health and safety related matters. The company offers adequate safety training to its staff as demarcated in KORE as its global baseline. The health and safety training cover periodic refresher and new-hire induction for all workers and associates working in all its supply chains. Employees participation aspect, the company is among the top in the word, hence the element rated as world class.

Review Process, Assessment, And Prioritization

Best Practice Information

An organization must continually review various processes to identify the variation between what the requirements are and its health and safety MS currently in place. Risks and hazards occurring in operations call for the reviews of the MS. After the analysis is done and risks and dangers identified, their impacts should be assessed and prioritized according to the risk levels and significance for economic and efficient utilization of the scarce resources.

Objective evidence and effective implementation

The Board reviews assess and prioritize internal control systems and Group risk which monitors the exposure to ensure effective management of the extent and nature of the hazard in alignment with company’s objectives. Being the think tank of the company, the Group Risk Forum members who are senior leaders contribute their insight and experience to evaluate the company’s review, assessment, and prioritization of the risks. The element can be assessed as moderate, and improvement recommendations include the involvement of external professionals like health care workers who can go through the processes and products to identify risks and recommend appropriate solutions (Ventola, 2014).

Risk Assessment

Best Practice Information

As an integral part of health and safety practices, risk management involves identification of potential damage and harm of a hazard then identification of injurious incident occurring as a result.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

The company has put a robust framework in place that involves bottom-up and top-down methods that identify and escalates any risk resulting from its operations. A Risk Register is created for the country, business unit and groups levels, and entity, then the risks identified are incorporated into the daily company routine. The company uses current and historical risk assessment surveys, conduct screening and high-level risk ranking, and use bow-tie method for cause and consequence identification of significant risks. Next is identifying new and existing risks assessments, linking them to other related risks, and finally ensure operational and strategic risks are considered in their business planning conducted annually. The process of risk assessment used by the company is highly efficient hence rated in the World Class tier.

Hierarchy of Control

Best Practice Information

The element presents the necessary actions to be considered in case of a risk in a logical order which includes elimination, substitution of the least hazardous materials, engineering and warning control, administrative and lastly personal protective equipment.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

There have been reported cases of the company’s workers going on strike and disagreements with the bottling agencies, and this is because it fails to use the appropriate hierarchy control measures. The element that is at a moderate level and the improvements recommendations would be giving the other hierarchical control methods a try which addresses different problems in the unusual but effective way (Hoyos & Zimolong, 2014).

Design Reviews

Best Practice Information

A company is required to establish a process which identifies and takes the necessary measures to prevent and control hazards both at the design and the redesign levels to ensure that the risk does not amount to an unacceptable level.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

To ensure that no risks are brought to the workplace, Coca-Cola works with their bottling agents to ensure that they focus on more actionable and comprehensive reporting metrics to allow for better management. The element for the company is at a World Class level.

Management of Change

Best Practice Information

When the element is effectively implemented, it reduces the potential for fatalities and serious injuries. It also reduces environmental damages and all forms of accidents at every level.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

Most of the injuries associated with the company occur from the vending machines which usually trap and crush on people when shaken. The rating of the element is strong as there are gaps that need to be filled in. The appropriate recommendation of avoiding the risk is by creating awareness of the risks associated when a person operates the machine appropriately, and also give brief descriptions on how to work the vending machines.

Procurement

Best Practice Information

The purpose of the element is to ensure that no risks and hazards are brought to the workplace. The procurement process should be instituted to make reviews on materials and goods purchased to evaluate and identify safety and health risks before the products are introduced to the workplace.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

The company has put a Procurement Department in place which works closely with CCE Supply Chain to manage its external expenditure, facilitate direct and indirect procurement, as well as oversee commodity risk management. There is a diversity of suppliers who cover energy, packaging, ingredients, fleet, and facilities and building services that must be sustainable. The element can be rated as a world class.

Monitoring and Measurement

Best Practice Information

The methods involved in this element include the inspection of the workplace, employee input, incident tracking, comparing performance to applicable requirements as required by the law, the organization, and OHS MS.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

The employees in the company are required to take responsibility and maintain safety measures in their areas of working. They are also expected to report on any malfunctions they notice and in case of any injury; they are to inform the health and safety department right away. In 2015, the company improved its safety culture by analyzing factors that lead to injuries, then collaborated with their global supply chain to address the actual causal factors to improve safety. The element is at a world-class level.

Incident Investigations

Best Practice Information

This refers to the finding and determining the cause-root of an injury or an accident at a workplace to prevent their recurrence.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

There have several accidents reported in the company, for instance the one that claimed Ken’s sight who cleaned production system using the wrong procedure. However, after the incident, the company has introduced Zero Accident Behavior and Lattitude Safety to investigate on all accidents and how the company goes about accidents. As per now, the element is a world class level.

Audits

Best Practice Information

Periodic audits should be conducted by external professionals to establish the implementation and maintenance of OHS MS, and ensure that they align with the required standards.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

The company plans for both internalized and unannounced audits for its environment and safety departments to ensure conformance and compliance with international set standards. The specific audits conducted are those for surveillance, compliance, certification, and systems. The element is a world class for the company.

Corrective and Preventive Actions

Best Practice Information

The element refers to the improvements done to various processes in an organization to eliminate undesirable situations and any other non-conformities. ISO states that all corrective and preventive actions to be documented.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

Each unit in the company has its corrective action in place to prevent the recurrence of nonconformities. The documented procedure prepared by each unit contains a review of several conformities like customer complaints, the causes of the non-conformities, tracking the action status and determination and implementation of actions needed. The element is a world-class performance of OHS.

Feedback to The Planning Process

Best Practice Information

The element ensures an effective strategic planning process that meets its intended results and outcomes by collecting data from the workers and using the feedback data to modify the process.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

On a regular basis, the company conducts interviews with the top management officials from various branches on the overall performance, the information gathered is then put in place to strengthen the shortcomings and input on the numerous improvements. The element can be rated strong and recommended development would be to include employees since they operate and execute most of the work, hence in a better place to provide a concrete and highly useful feedback (Foudraine, 2015).

Management Review

Best Practice Information

The top management of a company’s various units needs to review the management system on a regular basis to ensure sustainability, efficiency, continuing implementation, adequacy, and effectiveness.

Objective Evidence and Effective Implementation

To implement the element, Coca-Cola validates the HACCP and audit results, analyses consumer and customer feedbacks, individual and trends appropriately, and also analyses product and performance conformity data. Additionally, the top management checks the status of corrective and preventive actions and also provides recommendations for improvement. The element it at world class tier.

Conclusion

Deducing from the above information and findings, Coca-Cola has a productive and efficient safety management system in place. The company has a global presence, an implication that its OHS MS needs to be maintained at high levels that conforms to their customers across the globe. The management system enables the company to implement all parts of safety with high accuracy. Without the top OHS MS in place, the company would have collapsed as it would not have reached the world-class quality that it is at currently. Although appearing in what seems like minor cases, few gaps need to be filled up and rectified in the operations of the company.

References

Foudraine, J. P. (2015). Practices to involve the employees in strategy process (Bachelor’s thesis, University of Twente).

Gade, A. (2016). Corporate Social Responsibility: Moving forward from Charity to Responsibility: A Case study of Coca-Cola India. TIMSR Journal of Management Research, 139-143.

Hoyos, C. G., & Zimolong, B. M. (2014). Occupational safety and accidents prevention: behavioral strategies and methods (Vol. 11). Elsevier.

Reese, C. D. (2015). Occupational health and safety management: a practical approach. CRC press.

Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and healthcare professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491.