Organizational Preventive Practices

Some consvJting firms and other organizations may consider liability insurance optional, yet all such organizations should aggressively and systematically establish programs to 

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After citing examples of circumstances in which the entry-level professional should know some legal fundamentals, the chapter explains selected legal terms and notes the increased tendency to initiate legal actions. Three ways in which liability is incurred are explained followed by examples of failures and lessons learned from them. The chapter discusses ways to minimize liability including liability insurance, organizational preventive practices, and personal preventive practices. An admonition to keep liabihty minimization in perspective follows and the chapter concludes with an introduction to the legal forms of business. 

A safety management system for implementing the prevention policy has been put into effect. The policy should include the organizational structure, responsibilities, practices, procedures, processes, and resources for determining and implementing the policy. 

Designing a corrective action plan—Along with the ability to audit and evaluate the status of documentation and organizational practices is the need to know how to address and correct deficiencies that are identified. Audit activities should always be paired with the development of a comprehensive enhancement plan that addresses, corrects, and prevents all deficient practices observed during the audit. An audit without this corrective and preventative counterpart is at best useless and at worst quite dangerous if the noted deficiencies go uncorrected. 

An important cause of many injuries and incidents is taking unnecessary risks this is sometimes called practicing at-risk behavior. At-risk behaviors account for 80-90% of injuries, while only 10-20% of injuries are due to unsafe conditions - the majority (70%) of at-risk behaviors were caused by organizational weaknesses and about 30% were due to individual decisions. Unnecessary risks are actions that violate safety principles, safety mles, and safe practices. If you can avoid taking unnecessary risks, you will likely prevent or reduce chances of an incident. 

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