September 30

Bobbie had worked with XYZ Co for several years but even though she interacted with everyone in the business as HSE manager, she realized that she still needed to learn more about some of the functions and departments.  Luckily the previous Friday had been quiet and she’d been able to draw up a list of documents that she wanted to review before she started her interviews.  She had the company’s annual report for the last couple of years, an org chart and some other internal reference documents. She’d already run a few different searches on the main trade news sites and some general Google searches on XYZ Co to see what other stories came up.  Once her normal Monday morning admin had been dealt with, she settled in to get some reading done.

Over the next few hours, she was able to build a better picture of XYZ Co as a whole, most of which matched what she already knew, but she also found out a few pieces of information that would help clarify things later on. She’d realized that she didn’t know very much about the facility in Janwick other than their day-to-day operations so she added that to her list of information requirements.  

She was making quick work of things but was glad she’d scheduled the interviews for later that week: it was going to take most of Monday and some of Tuesday to get all her research finished and complete her notes. 

She had already had one interview with Joe, the operations superintendent who ran all the actual manufacturing and supervised the warehouse. Joe was due to be out of the office that week so they’d crammed in a quick hour over lunch one day.

It had been awful.

Bobbie had jotted down a few questions to ask but, almost as soon as they started, she’d got torrent of complaints from Joe about everything from how Yvonne ran Operations to the company health plan. It wasn’t that there was nothing of use in what he said, it was just such a garbled mess that Bobbie struggled to keep up. It was also hard to separate actual events that had interrupted his work with things that just ticked him off. In the end, she had a clear idea of what was bugging Joe but not much in the way of information to use for the assessment.

Looking back, Bobbie realized that this was actually a blessing in disguise: she now had the time to plan the upcoming interviews. Otherwise it could have been two days of complaints and gripes.

Over the weekend, Bobbie had sketched out how she’d approach the next set of her interview and had broken each into three parts.  

First would be a general set of questions to clarify the exact role of that individual and department, how that function supports the overall organization and what the department’s key objectives are.  Throughout this first part, she’d use follow up questions to close any information gaps remaining after her research. Once she was comfortable that she understood the department’s role and function, she would then ask about areas of concern and previous events to determine what kind of threats the department faces and how these might affect the business.  She’d end by asking about the measures that they have in place to prevent or respond to events.

That was going to give her a much clearer structure to follow and hopefully let her maintain better control of the discussion. Plus she’d also have completed all her background reading and would have additional specific questions to ask.

It was still hard.

By mid-afternoon on Thursday she realized that the strength of this structured approach was also a weakness, for her anyway. Asking the same questions over and over was wearing her out. However, just as she was tempted to skip ahead, she got a surprising answer from Fred in Janwick. 

—–

They’d been on the videoconference for almost an hour and Bobbie had just asked if there were any previous events she should be aware of in Janwick. She was getting tired of going through the same questions and was waiting to hear a  list of events that had already been reported.

‘I am the HSE manager after all,’ she’d thought. ‘Shouldn’t be anything new here.’

“Well, there is the civil unrest we’re tracking,” Fred had replied.

“Ummm, OK,” she’d begun to feel concerned, “tell me more. And why didn’t we hear about this before?”

Fred had given a rueful grin.

“Sorry Bobbie, I didn’t mean to worry you. It hasn’t affected us yet – but I stress the ‘yet’ part. Basically we’ve got local elections coming up and some of the politicians are stirring things up a bit. That’s getting people a bit heated and there’ve been some fights break out between rival supporters but nothing at the plant or nearby.”

“We’ve got a few measures in place to keep things civil at work and we’re tracking how this might escalate but I keep forgetting it’s not on anyone’s radar back in Houston. Even though it hasn’t affected us yet, I should be keeping you updated.”

“Hey, no worries, Fred. We’re too distracted by our own elections sometimes. Thanks for updating me. That’s definitely something we need to consider in the risk assessment. We need to make sure you’re all safe and we’re so reliant on your guys that anything happening with you could have a real knock-on effect to the supply chain.”

She’d made some more notes and was grateful she’d asked that one question.

‘Score one for sticking to the template,’ she’d thought.

—–

Bobbie finished her last interview with Zack at 4:00pm on Friday and headed back to her office, dropping her notepad onto the growing pile of documents she had gathered for the assessment.  She remembered that she still had to finish her weekly safety summary report so she put the risk assessment aside for a moment and got to work on her routine reports.  

At around 5:00pm, she heard a knock and looked up to see Xavier at the door.  The CEO looked around Bobbie’s office and saw the growing piles of paper.

“I guess that wasn’t such a little project after all.  What do you say you just send me the draft of the weekly safety report now and call it a day?  I can finish that up myself and let you get off.”

“See you Monday,” Xavier called over his shoulder as he headed back to his own office.

Bobbie didn’t need to be asked twice.  She hit ‘send’ on the draft report and was out the door before the CEO could change his mind. The size and scope of the risk assessment was becoming clear and she wanted to grab a break while she could. It was only going to get more frantic from this point on.