Safety 360
June 30, 2020
All Hands and Hearts is the leading, secular nonprofit that mobilizes volunteers to provide relief in disaster zones around the world. We harness the energy and compassion of volunteers, enabling them to safely and effectively assist with the immediate and long-term needs of affected communities, without burdening an already fragile situation. Founded 15 years ago, in the past three years, All Hands and Hearts has grown at an accelerated rate, in part due to the increasing severity of disasters.
More than a year ago, All Hands and Hearts made a renewed commitment to safety. As part of that, we created a new management role to promote a consistent level of safety for all of our staff and volunteers. We began by defining what “safety” means to us and, by the time we finished, the list was exhaustive:
- The wellbeing of our staff and volunteers;
- Health and safety in our work;
- Safety and security of our operational locations;
- Travel security;
- Safeguarding;
- Crisis response and management
When disaster strikes, we enable anyone who has the heart to help with the opportunity to do so, in a responsible and coordinated way, regardless of the skills they have or the time they can give. Program staff members are rotated in and out of on-the-ground roles every six months. Our programs are distributed across the world, introducing a wide variance in regulatory control and safety culture.
It was clear that for a system to be appropriate, it must be adaptable to the many and varying contexts in which All Hands and Hearts responds to disasters. It must also have consistency, to maximize the opportunity for continual improvement and provide familiarity across our disaster relief operations. We recognize that safety is not something that any organization can ensure, instead, we aim to provide our people with safe options to choose from, at the right time.
All Hands and Hearts adopted a risk-based approach to our Safety Systems – ensuring our controls are appropriate for the particular and evolving situations we work in. A series of risk assessments combine to provide a holistic view of the threats and hazards we face, in travel and work.
On our worksites, we’re standardizing our approach to safety by focusing on the principles of clearly identifying hazards, prioritizing safety measures in project design and building competence in our workforce.
Every program location has its own security plan. This plan contains protocols to reduce the likelihood of a hazard from occurring and contingency plans (i.e. plans for medical emergency) to reduce the severity of a risk if it does occur. This plan is based on risk assessment and informs a security briefing document, which is shared with volunteers pre-arrival to provide them with clear information on the situation they may face.
Promoting good mental health is critical in disaster response. A working group was created in partnership with our Human Resources department, consisting of a selection of staff, of varying functions across the organization, and various external expert advisors. This has led to All Hands and Hearts making a series of efforts and investments. We aim to encourage an open, supportive environment and have provided 24/7 access to professional resources for proactive management and to respond to issues that do arise for all of our staff and volunteers.
We are expanding our safeguarding controls beyond the existing systems, which focus on the protection of children and vulnerable adults to a more holistic definition of “to protect personnel from harm and from harming others.” Our objective is to have systems ensuring we can listen, prevent, respond and learn.
For all of our preventative measures, we must also be prepared for an emergency. We have formed a specific team of senior leaders from across the organization to ensure all organizational resources are made available to the person, or people, in crisis. We have invested in insurance policies, professional services and technology to ensure our teams have access to the resources they need in an emergency. Using a dedicated resource, we have identified externally regulated first aid protocols to adopt, designed customized first aid training and have provided that training across six programs to date. When incidents do occur, they are recorded in our online Incident Reporting System. The reports are analyzed for opportunities to improve. By not accepting human error as a root cause, we force ourselves to identify ways to provide safer choices.
The All Hands and Hearts holistic approach to safety is a continuous journey. We commit to continue to prioritize safety and assess, learn and improve our systems. We welcome feedback, and provide this form to share your input directly with our Safety team.
