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VelocityEHS talks discuss about Root, Cause and Analysis.

Video Transcript

If I were to ask a lot of people in the industry when they should do root cause analysis, I would probably get the most common answer: “after an injury occurs.” And that’s correct as far as it goes, but I would go a little bit further than that.

If we think about why we are doing root cause analysis, it’s to identify risks in the workplace. And I think that pretty much everybody understands that identifying risks is one of the most important things that we do. Which is why it seems a little bit odd to me that then we choose to wait to do it until somebody gets injured.

My advice as a former EHS coordinator is expand the scope! It shouldn’t really matter how we find out about risks in the workplace. I recommend doing root cause analysis if you find out about a risk not only through an incident investigation but through an audit, an inspection, a safety meeting observation or just an employee stopping you in the hall and telling you that there is something that needs your attention.

You might be thinking that that’s going to be a lot of work, but the thing is – there are tools available today that make all of this a lot easier. So, look for solutions that will let you capture all of the risks in your workplace all of the time.