Rethinking Risk: A Dynamic Framework for Health and Safety Leaders

Frameworks are essential tools for health and safety leaders, providing a clear structure for decision-making, aligning teams on priorities, and ensuring risks are managed consistently across an organisation. But what happens when traditional models like the Hierarchy of Controls (HOC) reach their limitations?

In this insightful session, Crystal Danbury, Director of Group Safety, Insurance & Occupational Wellbeing at Sainsbury’s (UK), joins Peter Jenkins, ecoPortal’s UK Country Manager, to introduce a more dynamic framework centred on Identification, Understanding, and then Accepting, Mitigating, or Removing risk. We explore why frameworks are essential for driving clarity and accountability, and how the right approach can shift organisations from a culture of blame to one focused on causation.

Key themes:

• The Role of Effective Frameworks: Understand how structured frameworks provide clarity, consistency, and accountability, helping organisations make better decisions, align teams, and manage risks effectively across all levels.

• Challenging Traditional Approaches: Examine the limitations of the traditional Hierarchy of Controls (HOC) and explore how more dynamic frameworks can guide better decision-making and more effective risk management.

• Identifying and Understanding Risk: Explore how to systematically recognise hazards—from operational processes to human factors—and learn methods to analyse and interpret their true impact on organisational vulnerabilities.

• Mitigating, Accepting, or Removing Risk: Practical approaches to managing risks, including mitigation strategies, informed risk acceptance, and the elimination of hazards, with real-world examples.

This episode is essential listening for HR and People Leaders, EHS and Risk Professionals, Facilities and Operations Managers, Frontline Supervisors, and C-level Executives seeking to integrate proactive safety and wellbeing into organisational strategy and risk management.

Featuring:

Crystal Danbury, Director of Group Safety, Insurance & Occupational Wellbeing at Sainsbury’s (UK) Grounded in a people-first and risk-acceptance approach, Crystal’s framework and extensive experience can help you and your organisation move from reactive to proactive safety management, gain deeper insights, and ultimately build safer, more resilient workplaces.

Available now on all major podcast platforms.