Having a culture of safety in the workplace goes far beyond conducting risk assessments and isolating potential risks. Of course, identifying and reducing risks that pose a threat to the workforce is something that must always be implemented. But, without inspired and engaged employees, your safety measures won’t be as robust and effective as they could be.
What Is a Culture of Safety In The Workplace?
A culture of safety in the workplace is something that reflects a collection of attitudes, beliefs and personal values that your employees share in relation to health and safety. Having a workforce that shares a collection of views when it comes to health and safety can be an extremely powerful thing and has the power to shape other people’s behaviour and influence them. Remember, its all about having a positive culture in place that ensures the safety and well-being of everyone.
A culture of safety in the workplace is built upon an environment that value the importance of health and safety, have a positive attitude towards it and respect the meaningful improvement goals. This is together with having clear and effective policies and procedures in place that the workforce can use a reference tool.
Employee engagement within the workplace is a key component of successful running an effective business but is one of the most challenging things to achieve. To have an effective workplace culture, each individual employee must accept responsibility for ensuring their own safety and health, whilst also taking a considerable amount of responsibility for the safety of others.
Implementing a culture of safety in the workplace is a serious task for any type of company regardless of industry. At Terra Firma 360, we strongly believe that the most effective way of handling accidents in the workplace is to prevent them from taking place. And, to do that, a company must have a well-constructed health and safety program in place.
Understand the Risks That Are Present in The Workplace
Before a culture of safety can be implemented in the workplace, a company must first identify the risks that are present within the environment. This includes looking at accidents that have taken place in the past, where they could have been avoided and what incident reporting system you currently have in place. Having a clear understanding of these risks is essential is to start building a safer workplace for everyone within your business.
Create and Roll-out A Health and Safety Plan
Once you have clearly identified and evaluated the risks, you must then come up with formal operating procedures and processes in place for all employees to follow. By doing so means that you reduce or even completely eliminate the risks. These procedures and processes should be realistic, consistent and thoroughly communicated to the employees on a regular basis. A great way to do this is to regularly schedule in training sessions that employees can engage with and ask them to fill out a safety attitudes questionnaire every now and then.
Encourage Employees to Commit to The Plan
Once your procedures and processes have been implemented, a crucial element of safety culture in the workplace is to get all employees to commit to creating a safer workplace for everyone. However, this will include some employees changing their mindset and attitudes in order to view workplace safety as a priority at all times. Having a team that regard the safety and well-being of each other as a priority means that your culture of safety is being managed effectively.
Consistently Monitor The Health and Safety Plan
The continued introduction of disruptive and innovative technologies means that the world of business is always subject to change. That’s why health and safety procedures and processes must continuously be monitored and evaluated to ensure that the actions put in place are still working effectively.
Our Top Tips
You may find that the concept of building and introducing a culture of safety is intimidating because your workplace has fallen into a pattern of complacency. Well, let us just be clear, complacency is extremely dangerous in the workplace. It can cause injuries, illnesses, catastrophic accidents and in the worst-case scenario; loss of life. If you are looking at ways of introducing a positive culture to ensure the safety and well-being of your employees, then here are some simple, but highly effective tips.
- Provide your employees with safety training.
- Communicate.
- Lead by example.
- Have a positive reporting process in place.
- Regularly review your safety management systems.
- Involve employees in the process of developing a positive culture.
At Terra Firma 360, we are expert health and safety consultants and provide bespoke training to many different types of businesses. If you would like help with building a culture of safety within your business, then please get in touch with today! Call us on 020 3326 5137 or email hello@www.terrafirma360.co.uk.