We all know how important safety is to your workplace. It keeps things running smoothly, manages risk, creates trust with your clients, and most importantly prevents injuries and accidental deaths.
You can’t build or sustain a workplace that values safety all on your own.
It has to be a culture. Merriam Webster defines culture as: “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.”
Managing a safe workplace has to be a shared effort by all. Safety must become a core, shared value by every employee from the top to the bottom.
A Strong Safety Culture Pays Off
Consider these numbers : “A recent SmartMarket Report states that an improved safety culture decreases reportable injuries by 10%, increases the ability to contract new work by 10%, and increases the ability to retain staff by 18%.” See source here.
A safety culture is beneficial to everyone- even your company’s bottom line. Ready to work on creating a culture of safety? Let’s start with this question:
Are You Managing or Leading?
Most companies are very strong on the managing side. They can make things happen. But not so much on the leading side. What’s the difference? While there’s much to read about this topic, to put it simply, a leader helps employees to see the why behind the instructions- taking it a step further in terms of motivation and overall influence.
By managing, organizations make things happen. It’s a linear, practical function…By leading, organizations show employees why safety matters, why they should be motivated to get behind it and want to do it.
Tom Krause, Ph.D., CEO of Behavioral Science Technology Inc., continues to explain that leading in the area of safety is absolutely vital, especially when it comes to the senior leadership of a company. He says, “If senior leadership gets it right, then the culture will change. If senior management doesn’t get it right, then everything else is like swimming upstream. It’s a struggle.”
8 Culture-Building Tips from OSHA:
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Define safety responsibilities: Do this for each level within your organization. This should include policies, goals and plans for the safety culture.
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Share your safety vision: Everyone should be in the same boat when establishing goals and objectives for their safety culture.
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Enforce accountability: Create a process that holds everyone accountable for being visibly involved, especially managers and supervisors. They are the leaders for a positive change.
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Provide multiple options: Provide different options for employees to bring their concerns or issues full-face. There should be a chain of command to make sure supervisors are held accountable for being responsive.
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Report, report, report: Educate employees on the importance of reporting injuries, first aids and near misses. Prepare for an increase in incidents if currently there is under-reporting. It will level off eventually.
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Rebuild the investigation system: Evaluating the incident investigation system is critical to make sure investigations are conducted in an effective manner. This should help get to the root cause of accidents and incidents.
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Build trust: When things start to change in the workplace, it is important to keep the water calm. Building trust will help everyone work together to see improvements.
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Celebrate success: Make your efforts public to keep everyone motivated and updated throughout the process.
Work with the Safety Experts
Partner with us to add the best trained and equipped safety personnel to your team. We’ve built a company on a culture of safety and we take pride in being the safety specialists.
When you outsource with us, you’re getting people that will bring a culture of safety to YOUR work environment. Call us today at 225-753-1909 or contact us here for more information about outsourcing!
