Reducing Risk in School Settings

Reducing Risk in School Settings

 If you run a school then you, of all people, understand just how many hazards there are in place. This isn’t just the case for students, but also for the staff members and employees.

 Risk management comes in as one of the most important factors to investigate when running a K-12 facility. It’s not just about the traffic or the fire hazards, but also the labs and any emergency that might occur.

 No matter the precautionary measures taken, there are several risk factors which might occur on a day to day basis. In order to make sure that both staff and students are safe, along with the school assets as well, it becomes necessary to make a proactive approach and mitigate risks in schools.

•  What Makes a Successful Risk Management Program?

 Well, the key is to include a careful and planned strategy which helps take all the potential hazards into consideration. However, getting started is where the trouble occurs.

 Most school districts fail to have a system which identifies the risks and the application of the process in order to assess them. This results in gaps in consistency for hazard remediation.

 If you’re looking for effective ways to manage risk and reduce the disruption of a student’s education, damage to a school’s reputation, loss of time, stress from incident management, and potential risks of legal intervention, then it’s time that you take this aspect seriously.

In order to help your school become a much better and safer place to study and work, it’s time you took some initiatives. Firstly, it helps to carry out a few risk management processes that will help you out.

•  Creating Risk Management Processes

 It’s important to note that the more uninformed you are about the risks that might come your way, the more you’re putting your school, students and staff in danger.

It’s always important that you have a plan laid out beforehand. The best thing that you will do is carry out these processes:

• Identify the Risk

It would be a great help if you turned towards making a list of all the potential threats that may occur within the school. Identifying the risks means you are evaluating everything that might be wrong with the structure of your building as well.

Once you have that done, it is beneficial to make a list and start to prioritize the most significant dangers that pose as a threat. Accordingly, you will move forward.

 ? Analyze and Evaluate the Risk

Once you’ve made a list, it’s crucial for you to take it one step at a time. Now most of the risks are hypothetical situations which have the least likelihood of occurring. These are also the risks which are the most dangerous.

In this case, you analyze which ones have the most potential of occurring and try to build a plan to prevent it.

• Treating the Risk

While prevention is a great start, you must also question yourself on what to do if the risk occurs. In this case, you need to make sure that you have a plan laid out.

Remember fire drills that you used to have back in school? Well, this is much like that. Prevention and preparation in terms of risks tend to go together. It’s important that you figure out how to go about it.

• Keeping Track

Once the prevention and preparation is well taken care of, your job isn’t quite over. How do you make sure that the problem doesn’t occur again?

Well, it’s simple, you do this by making sure that regular maintenance occurs. Not only that, keep in mind to investigate why the occurred in the first place, and then go about taking care of it.

 Risk management is ongoing practice which you, as an FM, need to pay close attention to. Consistently working and progressing the risk management is what defines your ability to handle the problems. Here are a few enhancements that you will make:

• Focus on the much greater risks

Lawsuits form one of the biggest threats to a school's image and reputation yet school districts and/or facility departments continue to operate under the pretense that imminence of litigation or the liability deriving from the ignored risk either will not happen or is far away.

 However, keeping the legal processes aside, it’s much more important to focus on the lives that are present on school property. The business must be carried on with the context of keeping the staff and students safe. Fear tends to diminish the effectiveness of risk management.

 Administrators must also consider relevancy. In the private sector, risk management has a large seat at the table, whereas with school district’s that is not always the case. Depending on priorities, some issues that play a vital role within the school some may not be relevant in the private sector. Identifying the relevance of issues often determines where and how money is spent in a school district. District-wide funding will be one of the biggest issues administrators face.

 Districts encounter daily challenges to come up with the right resources available to train staff—especially when it comes to implementing technology. Administrators must make tough decisions when considering funding realities and the need for as much risk management coverage as possible. They need to maintain a balance when money is at stake, as they are only able to make decisions based on the amount of funds available to them.

•  Focus on effective training

Safety training for the staff must play a major role along with ensuring that the district complies on both a state as well as a federal level.

 One of the main things that significantly reduces damage and accidents from occurring is training. Safety training has a trickle- down effect, and if provided at the appropriate level of training, administrators will see a significant effect in reduction of accidents, damage to buildings and costs overall.  

 Improving school safety and collaboration is an ongoing process which results in the success of schools. As compared to past problems, the issues that schools tend to face now are much more the staff different, which means that regular training and resourcing the staff will help in making a difference will allow them to understand how to handle various situations.

 Let’s take online databases such as Safe Schools Online Staff Training System as an example. In order to make sure that all employees are updated with risk management, school districts distribute quality training as an effective way to raise awareness on the issues and how to tackle them.

The digital database also serves as a proactive approach to training. Having an online database enables staff to train in school or at home and ensures that everyone has the necessary training to handle a situation before it occurs.

 In the end, by deploying an online safety training system, the district is saving money and time and will be more proactive in handling issues.