_____26. Safety and health program tasks are each specifically assigned to a person or position for performance or coordination.

Attributes

• An individual, or group, is assigned responsibility for compiling and analyzing records for safety and health trends.
• All elements of the company's Safety and Health Program are specifically assigned to a job or of position for coordination.
• Individuals within the company can describe the specific safety and health duties assigned to them.
• Assigned responsibility is documented.

Discussion

• Although assignable tasks pertain to most aspects of an organizational safety and health system, the particular tasks selected for assignment should follow primarily from review of the Operational Component (Elements 1-19). These elements almost always involve clearly assignable responsibilities. The training items (Elements 34-39) also frequently involve assignable responsibilities. Therefore, assessment of safety and health training can be expected to yield information relevant to this element.
• It is particularly important to examine the assignment of responsibilities for actions set forth in your organization‘s action plan, if any, because these tasks have direct bearing on achievement of current safety and health objectives.
• The intent of this element is simply to ascertain if managers and supervisors have identified and authorized responsible individuals they intend to hold accountable for the various safety and health tasks of your organization. The degree to which responsibilities have been successfully communicated to people who are authorized, motivated, and accountable for performance of the assigned tasks is the subject of other elements.
• This element is not concerned with responsibility in the sense of ultimate responsibility for workplace safety and health as placed on the employer by statute. It is concerned with the performance of specific safety and health tasks. Nevertheless, claims by very small owner/operators that they have retained total responsibility for all or most of the safety and health tasks in their small organizations may be accepted. Although one-person safety and health system may be workable in rare instances, more often these situations merely reflect the reluctance or inability of the employer to delegate. Regardless, the adequacy of a situation will be revealed through the assessment and rating of other elements.
• The notion that everybody is responsible is a common tenet in many organizations with strong safety and health cultures. This approach is great for some aspects of the safety and health system, such as following safety rules and reporting hazards. It is not acceptable for rating this element, which requires individual responsibilities for performing specific safety and health tasks. In this view, if everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.
• The evaluator can simply ask managers and supervisors to identify the individuals or positions with assigned responsibility for the relevant tasks. For example, if accident investigation is a priority task, the evaluator may ask a manager – "Who is responsible for conducting accident investigations?" The manager may respond by indicating that supervisors are responsible for investigating all accidents in their area. This fact establishes a confirming attribute for rating this element. If the manager indicates instead that no one has been assigned responsibility for accident investigations, then a negating attribute is established.
• If a hazard has been overlooked by your organization primarily because no one had responsibility for conducting a needed accident investigation, then the evaluator has established a negating attribute for rating this element. On the other hand, where evidence accumulated during a safety or health survey suggests that, at least sometimes, accident investigations are being performed; such evidence may provide a confirming attribute for rating the element.

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Module	Elements
6	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Quiz
7	11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Quiz
8	20 21 22 23 24 25 Quiz
9	26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Quiz
10	34 35 36 37 38 39 Quiz
11	40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 Quiz
12	50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 Quiz