Action planning

Action planning

What is action planning?

An action plan is a way of documenting what you are planning to do to improve your risk management. It is a tool to help you and your team focus on what needs to happen in order to reach your goals.

By carrying out a risk management self-assessment, you will realise that there are several aspects of your risk management that require some work. To improve how you manage risk and to make it more achievable, we suggest you break what you need to do into small chunks of work by 'eating an elephant one bite at a time'.

What goes into an action plan?

In developing an action plan you will need to carefully consider:

• The appropriate course of action
  
  Having identified the priorities for action, these need to be clearly documented. In doing so you will have a reminder and a document to revisit over time.
• A named person responsible for the action
  
  It is important to identify a named person for leading or coordinating the action. Most individuals and teams will take some responsibility for risk management issues. This will depend on their skills and time available.
• Time scale for action
  
  This may depend on the nature of the problem and action required: short-term actions can be remedied almost immediately; medium-term action requires a longer time to implement, perhaps up to six months; long-term actions are those that will take more than six months to achieve.

How do I develop an action plan?

There is a range of tools that can be used to develop an action plan. We have developed a form which asks some key questions that will help in developing your action plan. This should be simple to complete. We recommend that you focus on a few topics rather than becoming overwhelmed trying to solve all of your risk management issues at once. You can also use this form as a way of leading discussion if you are working with a group.

Action planning resources

Further information and resources

The following additional resource is available to help you with Action Planning:

© RANZCOG