Risk and Safety Management in the Leisure, Events, Tourism and Sports Industries

Mark Piekarz, Ian Jenkins, Peter Mills

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781789244809
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Risk management can often be poorly understood and applied in the leisure, sport, tourism (including adventure) and event industries. In particular, there can be a tendency to see the management of risk as simply its avoidance or removal from activities, projects and business ventures. Unfortunately, this can reduce the quality of the activity experience, or mean opportunities for profits are missed. This book is therefore designed for students and practitioners who wish to improve upon past practices, make better management decisions and ensure safer operating environments. It includes: - an explanation of the core underpinning concepts of risk and safety, which can be used at different levels of management, in different countries, for all leisure related industry sectors;- numerous applied examples and case studies from around the world;- many practical hints and tips on how to analyse, assess and control risks and improve on safety;- explanations of the key legal and regulatory underpinnings of risk and safety;- how risk and safety management practices can be developed, and their relevance for health and safety assessments, project risk management and strategic planning.

chapter 1


The Risk Encounter for the Different Industry Sectors

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

• To explain why risk management is important for practitioners to understand.

• To explain why managers in different industry sectors, at all levels of management, cannot avoid risk management.

• To define the key industry sectors, illustrating their relationship with each other and the importance of risk.

Key concepts

Risk and risk management; levels of management; defining adventure, leisure, events, sport and tourism.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter explores why risk management is difficult to avoid for practitioners and managers in the adventure, event, leisure, sport and tourism sectors. A representative model is developed to illustrate the variety of ways that risk and risk management are both encountered and utilized. Particular distinctions are made between those who help deliver services and those who plan services. Finally, a brief overview is given explaining what the different industry sectors are, how they relate to each other and some of the key reasons why it is vital to understand risk management in those sectors.

1.2 THE RISK ENCOUNTER

For someone working in the adventure, event, leisure, sport or tourism industry, it can be difficult to avoid risk management. By appreciating the factors that make risk unavoidable, it helps clarify the importance of understanding and using risk management theory and practices. These factors can be summarized as:

• Risk is an inherent part of life. Living involves constant exposure to risk and making decisions about risk. To cross a road, to take a new job, to play a sport, to go on holiday, to drive a car, all carry risks, with Box 1.1 offering more examples of how mundane objects and activities can generate risks. By recognizing the ubiquity of risk and the need to deal with it, this helps draw out an important feature about risk: that it involves assessing options and taking actions, which can be done in a matter of seconds, months or even years. In short, as Bernstein (1998: 12) observes, to take risks is to be human.

• Risk is an inherent part of adventure, sport and tourism activities. If there is no risk in many sport, adventure and travel activities then the essence of the activity and what creates the enjoyment and satisfaction can be lost. Just think where sport would be without physical contact, contests or if there was never any uncertainty about the outcome of games? Alternatively, consider the value of many adventurous activities in terms of the reflection on the learning, or the sense of achievement gained, if there was no surprise, challenge or arousal of emotion? Even in relation to travel, risk can play a vital role in the quality of the experience and it is of interest that the origin of the word travel derives from the French word travail, which means an arduous or painful journey, but one which still brings rewards.

• Risk management can help organizations remain market oriented. Marketing as a function is often misunderstood as simply advertising and selling. In fact the essence of marketing is about understanding customer needs and wants, whereby people are increasingly seeking more intense experiences. Risk can play a vital role in creating these memorable, intense experiences (explained in Chapter 7), which practitioners need to understand if they are to be market oriented (i.e. focusing on what customers need and want), rather than product oriented (i.e. focusing on the service or product offered, rather than the benefits it brings).

• Risk is an essential part of entrepreneurial activity. In business, risk is often viewed as essential, whereby Bernstein (1998) makes the blunt point that if there is no risk, there is no profit. Recognizing this is important in relation to adventure, sport and tourism activities as it can remind people who design services and products that taking risks may be necessary not only for the quality of the experiences, but also to make a financial profit.

• Risk is part of management. Merna and Faisal (2005: 35), citing Handy (1999), look at the necessity of risk in management, saying ‘risk management is not a separate activity from management, it is management’. They go on to argue that a symptom of poor management is the constant reaction to events; in contrast, effective management attempts to deal with uncertainty by anticipating future events that can generate risk, then developing plans to deal with them.

• Risk is part of the language of problem solving. A simple scan of news stories can quickly reveal many instances where the language of risk is used in all spheres of work and life, ranging from education, health, business and even war. This widespread usage gives an indication of the value of using risk theories and concepts. It should, however, be appreciated that common usage of the term ‘risk’ does not mean consistency in understanding or application; hence, a more detailed examination of what risk can mean is given in Chapter 2.

• Risk management is part of legal compliance. For the developed world at least, it can be difficult to find a country that does not have a number of legal and regulatory guidelines which deal with work or occupational health and safety. While they may not always directly refer to the term ‘risk’ or ‘risk management’, implicit in these many regulatory guidelines is a legal requirement to conduct some form of assessment in order to identify hazards and risks that people may be exposed to. There can also be regulatory guidelines that deal with corporate governance and have a more strategic risk focus.

Box 1.1. Risk is everywhere!

Bill Bryson gives this humorous reflection on the risks we are exposed to from mundane objects, which helps remind us that risks are everywhere, but that we accept them because of the benefits they bring. He says:

Here’s a fact for you. According to the latest Statistical Abstract of the United States, every year more than 400,000 Americans suffer injuries involving beds, mattresses or pillows. Think about that for a minute. That is more people than live in greater Coventry. That is almost 2,000 bed, mattresses or pillow injuries a day. In the time it takes you to read this article, four Americans will somehow manage to wound themselves by the bedding… consider this interesting fact: almost 50,000 Americans are injured each year by pencils, pens and other desk accessories. How do they do it? I have sat many an hour at a desk and would have greeted almost any kind of injury as a welcome diversion… Consider this one. In 1992… more than 400,0000 people in the United States were injured by chairs, sofas and sofa beds. Does it tell us something trenchant about the design of modern furniture or merely that Americans are exceptionally careless sitters? … But the people I would really like to meet are the 142,000 hapless souls who receive emergency injury room treatment for injuries inflicted by their clothing. What can they be suffering from? Compound pyjama fracture? Sweatpants hematoma? I am powerless to speculate. (Bryson, 1999: 23)

Yet there are problems. Despite the common usage and application of the concepts of risk, risk management and the management of risks (explained in more detail in Chapter 2), what can be so striking are the variations in definition and application. This leads to the problem that managers working at different levels of management, such as the health and safety, ­project or safety level, can encounter variations in the words, concepts and practices utilized. The result can be confusion. As will be explained in Chapter 2, these variations are not necessarily because operational safety, project or strategic risk management as used in the different sectors, or even countries, have different theoretical underpinnings; rather that it can reflect an insular development within the subject field or sector and the terminology or descriptors utilized.

It is also important to note that the growth of risk management practices is not the same as saying that there are more risks or dangers. For people in the developed world, improved sanitation, immunizations, health and safety legislation, etc. have made profound impacts on populations, life expectancy and the quality of life. Yet there is little doubt that the practice, language and literature on risk management have grown significantly over recent years; so much so that Furedi (2002) argues this now means a discrete risk industry has developed, which he considers is not necessarily always a good thing.

The challenge is for managers is to try and understand what is the tolerability of risks (TOR) (Gardiner, 2005: 175), or the minimum risk environment (MRE). The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) makes the important point that ‘tolerable’ risk does not necessarily mean ‘acceptable’ risk. Its goes on to say that a willingness by society to live with a risk is done so as to secure certain benefits, but in the confidence that the risk is one worth taking and that it is properly controlled (HSE, 2001: 3). For example:

• people are willing to tolerate the risk of a flight to gain the benefits of relaxing on a holiday;

• people will tolerate the risk of injury when playing sport to gain various health benefits;

• people will tolerate the risks of an event, such as travel delays and frustrations, to experience moments that can be intensified by sharing them with thousands of others;

• an entrepreneur may mortgage his/her house to raise the capital for a new business venture, which could mean a family home could be lost, but is done so because of the financial rewards that may be gained; and

• people may undertake a physically demanding adventure expedition to test themselves and gain a sense of achievement, even though it may be fraught with many physical dangers.

In all of these examples a degree of risk is ‘tolerated’ because of the personal or financial gains and benefits that may be made; the risks will be ‘accepted’ because there is a belief that the negative risks will be properly controlled by others, or because people have confidence in their ability to overcome the challenges and deal with the risks. Of course, what is deemed as tolerable can vary considerably between individuals, groups and countries, as will be discussed in Chapter 7 and as illustrated in Box 1.2. This also connects to the discussion in Chapter 5 in relation to what is reasonably practicable in terms of controlling the risks.

Box 1.2. Different risk tolerances?

An interesting observation can be made about how different countries tolerate and accept risk. In the USA for example, resorting to litigation (legal action) after accidents to try and gain compensation can be a common practice, which has also developed in the UK. Using litigation to seek financial compensation is epitomized by such slogans as ‘where there is blame, there is a claim’, with legal practices advertising their services that encourage people to put in claims with the promise of ‘no win, no cost.’ While there is no doubt that many claims are fully justified, particularly where there have been clear breaches in occupational or work health and safety guidelines, some would argue that the growth in a compensation culture is also leading to a risk-averse society, which is not necessarily beneficial for the individual, society or the economy. In the UK for example, the 2010 government report entitled Common Sense, Common Safety (Lord Young of Graffham, 2010) looked at the issue of health and safety regulation and the concern that it was being over-zealously applied, leading to such problems as ‘uninspiring play spaces that do not enable children to properly experience risk, or school trips cancelled because of concerns over health and safety’ (Lord Young of Graffham, 2010: 37). A key theme of the report was to try and move towards a risk–benefit analysis approach to the management of risk.

Collins and Collins (2013: 74) explain and outline the a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Risk Encounter for the Different Industry Sectors
• 2. Risk Definitions, Cultures and Practical Processes
• 3. Key Theories Underpinning Risk Management
• 4. Risk Management Research, Models and Tool Application
• 5. Management and Control of Risks
• 6. Designing Risk Forms, Documentation and Using Assessment Scales
• 7. Risk Perceptions and Decision Making
• 8. The Law of Tort and its Relevance for Risk Management
• 9. Risk and Safety Management
• 10. Experience, Analysis of Incidents and Accidents
• 11. Learning from the Past – Case Study Analysis
• 12. Conclusion
• Index
• Back Cover