As the financial year 20-21 draws to an end, it is worth taking stock of what we lost and what we gained. Hopefully, we lost rigidity and lethargy and embraced new ways of working. We gained confidence that if I can survive this, I can survive pretty much anything else. And these gains and losses pretty much apply to individuals and organizations.

I can not but look at the unfolding situation from a Quality management and OHS perspective. The pandemic reinforced the need of establishing and implementing standard processes if we are to achieve desired result in a consistent manner. This was evident by the SOPs that many organizations implemented successfully to control the spread of Covid at the workplace. Another concept of Quality Management viz “do it right the first time’ was also driven home convincingly. The adage “prevention is better than cure” which is the underpinning of good OHS practices was also evident and if anyone wanted proof of it, one only needs to look at the graph of daily new cases and deaths due to Covid!

I hope that the reinforcement of these timeless principles will rub-off on our routine business activities and benefit us all.