Internal Use only
HR Advisory Notice 22
Date: September 2019
Subject: Individual Risk Assessments
Distribution: SIL Area HR leaders – Forward to all HR staff and Unit leaders and Unit HR teams
Alliance Representatives – Forward to Organisation and your team members.
Cc: HeRMiTs where appropriate please forward to your teams.
Background:
Following a critical incident there was a lessons learned that identified that because of the nature of the destination and en route transit, it would have been wise if the risk to the individual had been undertaken and recorded. Such a risk assessment would have enabled a better process when things started to go wrong and would have raised questions for the sending organisation before the person had traveled.
Advice:
It is accepted that much of the travel undertaken by SIL staff is within the “low to normal” level of risk acceptable to SIL and the sending organisations. However, there are some locations that present additional risk. There are SIL staff who travel who, for whatever reason, are not as robust emotionally, physically or mentally. These staff persons need to be encouraged to recognise these personal limitations and adjust their plans where they can. Where the less robust person travels to a higher risk location there is in effect an additional risk factor that needs to be addressed.
To try and make this expectation manageable and to provide clear guidance on where these risk assessments should be done, it is agreed that there is a list of countries that there must be individual risk assessments carried out for, and verified by a third party. The list as of October 2019 is found here. [link] The template form is here. [link] There are only so many elements of a risk assessment that can be indicated through checkboxes. The real work of a risk assessment is in the thinking through of the context and possible hazards.
Each Area Crisis Management Coordinator is available to assist staff and would be a good third party verifier. Some WO’s who track their staff’s travels may require their staff to submit such a risk assessment prior to travel. I hope in time there can be a place in Workday for such individual RA’s, to be a document type that can be attached to the person’s profile and retrievable by both Alliance organisations and SIL.
If you have further questions on implementation, please contact the Area Safety and Security Coordinator in the first instance.
Actions requested of HR or SIL leaders:
Please ensure that in HR this has been discussed with the relevant Safety and Security Coordinator at Area and Unit levels.
Please ensure Unit level HR leaders and Unit level line managers are aware of this expectation.
Keith Robinson
SIL Global CHRO