There’s a model by James Reason called the Swiss Cheese Model of accident causation. The model suggests that every intervention put in place to prevent accidents can be represented as a slice of Swiss cheese.
Each metaphorical slice of cheese is a barrier to an accident, but each slice has holes. An accident results from a hazard or risk slipping through multiple holes when the holes line up in the wrong way.
Outward Bound has a long history of risk management so our cheese slices are stacked high. At the bottom of this pile of interventions are our staff, stopping potential accidents as they slip through our cheese slice interventions.
Instructors learning how to right a capsized cutter.
Our staff are the only intervention that happens in situ, when all interventions fail, and therefore are our single most important component in the management of Haumara and Hauora. This is why this report starts with them.
The outdoor education sector has not been immune to the difficulties in hiring and retention that other industries have seen.
For the first time since 2021, we have a full host of delivery managers on-site at Anakiwa, with new training and operations managers starting in the first quarter of the 2023 financial year. This means a complete turnover of the delivery management team in the space of 12 months and a lot of learning.
With a new management team comes the opportunity to look at bringing in new ways of delivering our activities in safer ways and matching our operations to the changes happening in our industry.
The next, and most important component in keeping our students safe is our instructors. The last 12 months have seen us bring in 7 new instructors. However, we had hoped for a few more, meaning some thought is going into how we can attract and train high-quality staff to keep delivering safe programmes.
Fortunately, with a well-stocked management team now established, we will be well placed to support the folks we already have and to continue the hard mahi bringing in the stream of capable instructors.
Continuing our focus on staff, we’d be remiss to not discuss the effort that has gone in to support our current staff through the tail of a pandemic and back into a fully functional workplace.
Realistically, our instructional staff have 10% less experience than they should have because the experiences they have been exposed to are less because of the pandemic-related slowdown.
To mitigate this, ongoing efforts are being made to continue and improve our coaching, training and support for our delivery staff.
Training
This year 302 staff days were spent on collective training and 71 staff days were spent on personalised training, making a total of 373 staff days* spent training.
The following graphs illustrate the spread of topics or skill areas covered by staff training.
Some of the topics are not safety related but are shown here to provide a balanced picture of all training undertaken.
*Staff days are calculated by multiplying the number of attendees by the duration of the training. For example, 10 staff attending a two day course equals 20 staff days.
Safe Work Observations
For every course, managers or experienced instructors take opportunities to get into the field and spend time with instructors and students. This can take the form of site checks, observing staff as they deliver an activity, providing professional coaching for an instructor, or co-delivering an activity alongside an instructor.
These activities share experience, knowledge, and professional practice throughout the organisation. They also help to detect safety issues early before they result in an incident.This year we undertook 104 Safe Work Observations, up on the previous year’s 81 and almost reaching our goal of 108.
COVID
Not starting this H&S report by mentioning COVID is an indicator of how it is no longer the most dominant issue at Outward Bound. We have followed the national-related trends but has seen a more subdued and delayed effect on the health and safety of staff and students. Our management strategies have worked and our efforts have been rewarded with students completing courses when some other organisations have been cancelling and closing up shop completely.
Audits
Audits have and always will have a role in Outward Bound’s safety management strategies. This year is no different. This year was a non-Adventure Activity Audit year meaning we are only required to have a desk-based review. This was completed early in the year and passed having shown an improvement in our capabilities as required from our last full Adventure Activity Audit.
The COVID period and lack of management staff in Anakiwa had a significant impact on our self-imposed audit schedule. This is now looking much better with audits for maritime operations, vehicle operations and our high ropes activity now either being completed or set up and ready to be completed.
New Vehicle
It's easy to overlook the health and safety benefits of purchasing new equipment because it's something that happens all the time. So it is important to highlight the purchase of our new 2022 Mercedes Sprinter which will be used for transporting students.
Thanks to those who supported us to get this vehicle. It represents a big leap in vehicle safety in that it has reversing cams, emergency braking, fatigue monitoring, and all the other mod-cons you'd expect on a new vehicle, all of which are not present in our existing fleet.
Digitisation
A significant area of opportunity is the digitisation of the safety management system and its relevant processes.
The last 12 months have seen us start to change some of these with a notable example being the way we manage reporting through safety-related work, for example, the reporting of hazards and their subsequent management.
This is now fully digitised with automation where possible. Resulting in more efficient management and requiring less manual administrative work.
This type of digitisation will continue over the next coming year and will lead to significant improvements in efficiency and look to bring us to the forefront of modern health and safety management.
