This stage requires careful and attentive application of the various critical incident elements reviewed in the earlier stages of the HSE Work PositiveCI process. The key is to tie all components together which will inform your final action plan. The coordinator, in conjunction with experts from the steering group (such as occupational health professionals or EAPs), should review the various critical incident sections of the HSE Work PositiveCI process including:
- The Job Content CI Audit
- The employee survey CI results
- Existing work practices
- The Workforce Outcome indicators
1. Reviewing the Job Content CI Audit results
The Job Content CI audit uses simple colour coding which will help inform what actions should be taken for the risks identified and the necessary support measures required for inclusion within the action plan. If the Job Content CI audit was completed at department level, these should be reviewed on an individual basis with interventions applied as specific to that department where appropriate.
- For those events with ‘likelihood’ of exposure in the red shaded category and/or the yellow shaded category, robust critical incident interventions (primary, secondary and tertiary interventions) are required.
- For those events with ‘likelihood’ of exposure in the green shaded category, standard general workplace stress interventions (primary, secondary and tertiary interventions) are required in addition to tertiary critical incident interventions.
Note - if the Job Content CI audit was completed at department level, these should be reviewed on an individual basis with interventions applied as specific to that department where appropriate.
2. Review the employee survey CI results
The employee survey distributed at the measure stage involves sector specific audit questions for individual participants. It allows participants to indicate the frequency, type and scale of experiences of critical incidents experienced in their course of work and views on the supports they received.
The employee survey CI results should be reviewed in conjunction with the Job Content CI Audit results. The review should focus on the following key areas:
- How many staff indicated that they were exposed to workplace critical incidents?
- Is there a particular department that is more exposed to workplace critical incidents?
- How many incidents (number) were they exposed to?
- What types of critical incidents were they exposed to?
- How do these results compare with those of the Job Content CI Audit as completed by the relevant line manager?
It is important to note that, whilst all of the Critical Incidents listed in the employee survey and the Job Content CI Audit are clearly defined and relative to varying occupational roles, the survey responses are based on staff perceptions, not organisational fact or records.
Note - Focus groups could be established which will allow your organisation to address and review the findings further.
3. Analyse the findings of existing work practices
At the ‘Measure’ stage there was a requirement to identify the key elements for managing critical incident stress through the completion of the consultative checklist. The purpose of this exercise was to determine what systems and resources are currently available within the psychological support system. Where issues were identified for follow up under ‘Action Required’ these should be incorporated as part of your final action plan. It is imperative that management and health service delivery staff play a key role in developing and implementing the action plan, participate actively in their statutory role in this regard and maintain the plan.
4. Reviewing Workforce Outcome Indicators
Reviewing workforce indicators for your service or department will help you determine if work-related stressors, psychosocial distress and critical incident stress are possible issues for your service or department.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be generated that have specific measurable targets for inclusion in the final action plan e.g. reducing accidents/incidents by x%
Please refer to the section “Workforce Outcome indicators”