These are challenging times for everyone. With the COVID-19 virus impacting our lives and workplace, most organizations in high-risk countries are struggling to keep their people safe, while looking for ways to ensure business continuity. There is a need for simple means to communicate risk scenarios and to inform each other about effective preventive and mitigating safety measures.
For CGE, this is a time where we can really contribute and make a difference. That is why we are organizing a free online webinar on how to manage COVID-19 risks that are imposed on businesses and their most valuable assets: people. This webinar took place on March 26th, 2020 at: 09:00 am CET, 01:00 pm CET, and 04:00 pm CET.
Help each other – Share knowledge
Key in this webinar is: sharing experiences and best practices with each other and translating that into an easy to understand, visual risk management model, also known as a bowtie.
Bowties are applicable to any risk and commonly used in high-hazard industries to understand and manage occupational safety, process safety and other business risks. In these times of turmoil, bowties can also help us visualize how COVID-19 can infect people and affect business continuity and performance.
Bowtie example – How infection with COVID-19 can occur and develop
The bowtie below is one example of how infection with COVID-19 and further spreading can occur and develop. This bowtie’s scope is to look at it from the angle of a business. The “hazardous activity” (yellow and black box) is operating in an environment where the virus is present, which is potentially most of the world at the moment. The central node below it, the top event, describes the point in time we lose control over the hazard. In this bowtie, an employee getting infected would be that point. The left side of the diagram shows the threats (or causes) in blue boxes. They describe how the infection can occur. The red boxes on the right visualize the potential unwanted outcomes (consequences) from having a top event. Safety measures, also called barriers, are situated on the scenario lines. They have a specific preventive, controlling or mitigating effect on the scenario line they sit on. We have opted to combine barriers from the World Health Organization (WHO) with some of the best practices we have heard companies implement around us.
