Introduction
Building a strong safety culture in the workplace is essential for safeguarding employees and creating a positive work environment. In this blog, you'll discover eight effective strategies for building a safety culture in the workplace.
1. Lead by Example
Creating a safety culture in the workplace begins with leadership. Managers and supervisors must show adequate safety behaviors. This includes, following safety protocols, using machine equipment in their intended manner, wearing all the required safety equipment and reporting all work place incidents. Managers and supervisors must act as role models to all employees in the work force.
2. In Depth Health and Safety Training
Training acts as the essential building blocks for employees to guide them in the correct path of safety. Proper training is vital in ensuring that everyone in the organization is aware of the proper safety protocols and expectations. Providing new safety training for new equipment is also a great way of staying ahead of the curve.
3. Involve Employees
Employees who are involved in creating and maintaining a safety culture are more likely to take ownership of their own safety and the safety of others. Encourage employees to start safety committees or focus groups, this will get the workforce involved in the health and safety process.
4. Clear Communication
To create a safety culture in the workplace, it is important to have open lines of communication regarding procedures, safety policies, and expectations. Communication should be clear, concise, and relevant to the working environment. Employees should be encouraged to report feedback and concerns about the workplace.
5. Regular Safety Audits
Conducting regular safety audits and assessments for all machinery and machine guarding to ensure that everything is working up to standard. It is encouraged to involve employees in this process so that they can stay up to date on the equipment and machine guarding that they use on a daily basis.
6. Incident reporting and Learning
Supervisors must encourage a no blame culture for reporting incidents and other near misses. Use these reports to learn and improve the safety measures rather than blaming co workers for their misuse. If blame is being assigned to employees after incidents and near misses, no employees will feel comfortable coming forward.
7. Setting Safety Goals and Metrics
When setting company wide safety goals, it is important to hold a meeting with the entire team so everyone knows the status of the goal. Goals should be set using the SMART framework to help set up the parameters of the goal. An example of a work place health and safety goal is “we will reduce the number of work place injuries and incidents by 30%in the next 12 month. We will reduce the number of injuries by installing machine guarding on all hazardous equipment.”
8. Continuously improve
Managers and supervisors should update the safety policies and procedures to keep up with new OSHA regulations. If frequent work place incidents are occurring with a specific piece of equipment, that is an indicator that the workforce may need a new training catalog for that piece of equipment. It is also important to stay adaptable to new protocols and health and safety methods.
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=small}
