Balancing your prevention strategy with smart software

Within the themes of safety, health and environment, it is all about optimising prevention. For this, you need a balanced prevention strategy, in which it is important to know which risks are acceptable for your organisation.

In this article, we take a closer look at what makes a prevention strategy balanced, what acceptable risks are, and how software can support both.

The importance of a good prevention strategy

A good prevention strategy focuses on identifying and managing risks to prevent incidents and accidents. This strategy includes policies and procedures for identifying potential risks, taking preventive measures and training employees on these measures.

A prevention strategy should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure that it meets the changing needs of the organisation and its environment. A good prevention strategy is therefore aimed at reducing risks and increasing safety within an organisation.

What makes a prevention strategy balanced?

While it is important to implement prevention measures, you must be careful not to overshoot the mark and come up with a one-sided prevention strategy. Incidents are unfortunately sometimes unavoidable, no matter how many prevention measures are put in place. A too rigidly prevention-oriented approach can lead to an unrealistic expectation of safety and a lack of preparation in case of an incident. You then face imbalance.

Striving for complete prevention and complete safety may additionally entail certain risks. It goes without saying that a multitude of measures creates costs and can sometimes actually lead to more uncertainty and fear. Moreover, complete prevention can hinder innovation. Companies and individual employees miss opportunities for innovation by focusing too one-sidedly on what can go wrong. And that while innovativeness (in the aforementioned sectors) is just so valuable.

This means we are constantly faced with the challenge of finding the best possible balance between absolute safety and risk. And to arrive at a balanced prevention strategy, we need to decide what are acceptable risks for our organisation.

What makes a risk an acceptable risk?

Acceptable risks are risks that an organisation is willing to live with because the benefits of taking the risk outweigh the potential harm. When determining what constitutes an acceptable risk, an organisation should consider several factors, such as the probability of the risk occurring, the possible consequences of the risk and the cost of taking preventive measures. An organisation must also always consider its own objectives and values, as well as laws and regulations and stakeholder expectations.

By weighing all these factors with a thorough risk analysis, an organisation can make an informed decision on what is an acceptable risk.

How can quality and risk management software help?

When setting up and implementing a balanced prevention strategy, a quality management system like Zenya can support you.

• For example, it can be used to develop and manage prevention measures so that employees know what to do to reduce risks and prevent incidents.
• You can also use it to track and monitor the implementation of prevention measures so that any deviations can be spotted and resolved in a timely manner.
• In addition, it can be used to collect and analyse data on previous incidents and near misses, which can help to understand what happened and what could have been done to prevent it.

You can also use quality management software to identify acceptable risks. Assess the possible consequences of risks through scenario analysis and simulation. This will help you better understand the possible consequences of taking the risk, where you can decide whether the consequences are acceptable. Or use the software to determine the cost of taking preventive measures. This way, you can decide whether the costs are acceptable, and therefore you can just take the risk.