What are the key benefits of the CCGA's Best Practices?
Recently the CCGA released version 4.0 of one of its signature publications, The CCGA Best Practice Manual. Inside is the collective knowledge of hundreds of individuals from across Canada. The best practices found in the manual were all reached by the consensus of countless stakeholders and offer more specifics on the best way to prevent damage than Legislation, Regulation or Standards could ever do.
Let's look at the key benefits of utilizing the CCGA Best Practices within your organization:
1) Identifies Knowledge Gaps
In a time of unprecedented change, there are new things to be learned and adapted too every day. It is crucial to identify the necessary qualifications required to get the job done. Understanding Best Practices helps leaders recognize existing knowledge gaps and fill them with proven practices. Consistently identifying knowledge gaps is crucial in order to prevent damages and improve overall performance.
2) Generates Creative and Innovative Ideas
Applying best practices helps employees share new innovative ideas to boost the performance and productivity of an organization. The best practices in the manual are not the only way to do something. Submitting new innovative practices to your regional best practice committee allows the industry to improve and innovate at a more rapid pace than any one organization can.
3) Enables Better Decision Making
When organizations are facing a problem, they tend to look around for solutions from existing sources. The Best Practice manual provides a free and convenient source of information that can provide a solution or starting point to the problem. The manual provides prudent, common-sense solutions to current issues, providing better and faster decision making, improving an organization's efficiency and productivity. No need to reinvent the wheel, if the industry has already decided this is a best practice you can save time and costs and deliver better results.
4) Boost Employee Competence
Competencies are a measurable set of skills, attributes, characteristics, and knowledge that helps an employee perform their job successfully. The Best Practice manual allows organizations to benefit by passing on the skills and knowledge learned over the years. "Create it once, use it many times" sums up the simplicity of the manual in making skills easy and repeatable.
5) Reduces The Loss of Know-How
Know-how is an important asset in every organization and should be managed to minimize the impact of loss. The most effective way to reduce the risk of losing knowledge is by documenting that knowledge in a place that everyone can benefit. What a great way to preserve and honour that knowledge by creating a Best Practice for inclusion in the manual.
Final Thoughts
The CCGA Best Practice manual has been developed over many years with the help of countless individuals across the country. It is a fluid document that improves with each submission. We rely on this continuous improvement and without your submissions, the manual would become static and outdated. The Regional and National committees do the important work of reviewing suggested changes to the National Best Practices and taking part in the consensus-based process that determines what our guiding best practices will be. It is critical to the integrity of that process that the highest number of stakeholder groups possible are represented at the table. No single stakeholder group can fully understand the most important elements in keeping people safe, so every one’s viewpoint needs to be considered. We all have a stake in safety.
Gordon Campbell – Canadian Common Ground Alliance