Don’t ever turn it off

Written by Tim Weymouth, Associate Director, ACII, AloL.

Roy Williams, who was Michael Jordan’s college coach at the University of North Carolina, states that Jordan was “the only player that could turn it on and off. And he never turned it off”. 

When you clicked on the link or email, did you have to think significantly about how you would move your hand or finger to make that happen, or when you walked from your bed to the bathroom this morning did you use up a lot of energy thinking about how you would do it?

The answer to both is probably no. Your body develops muscle memory which for some things, like walking, get honed due to the sheer volume of attempts. Consider how many times a toddler falls over in their learning to walk phase. But you generally hit a high level of repetitions quickly, which gives you muscle memory; the ability to perform a task with little or no conscious effort.

Let’s think about this from a risk perspective. We’ve said before that risk management should be the responsibility of everyone and not just the Health & Safety or Risk department(s), but how often is the topic of risk management thought about by those that don’t have it as part of their day-to-day working lives? 

For example, would those working outside during colder months automatically look to treat the surfaces they may have to work on for ice? Or in warmer months, are they UV-aware and automatically apply sun cream or the correct clothing? The sweet spot  should be that this is automatic; a form of second nature where everyone takes their safety, and that of their  colleagues’ safety, as an ongoing priority.

Whilst this could be a common goal from a health and safety perspective, this can also apply to your property. Now let’s apply this to a recent example. We recently had a period of high winds in late autumn followed by heavy rain where giant piles of leaves gathered. This  often happened in the worst places, such as entrances to down pipes on roofs which could then result in rainwater being trapped and putting increased strain on roofs. Consider this, just one cubic metre of water puts an additional ton of weight onto the roof structure.

I saw evidence of this when I was away in Porto, Portugal. You can climb onto the roof of the Church Igreja dos Carmelitas and the photo attached to this article shows one of its roof’s down pipes. I expect the roof space is inspected daily before the public access it, so the question should be, why has this been left in such a way? For me, it's that risk management has not been embedded into the mindset of every employee working at the church. Yet it's something that should never be turned off in an employee’s mind–  switched up to a subconscious level at the very least.

My wife asked why I noticed the blocked drain, which afforded me the only opportunity in my life to draw a professional comparison between Mr Jordan and myself!

And as the great basketball athlete himself once commented:  "Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."… although I don’t think he had a church roof with a dodgy down pipe in mind when he said that.

If you’d like to discuss your business’s potential risks and how to manage them, contact our specialist team today via the buttons below.