Culture Change
Creating a Safety Culture
Developing strong safety cultures has the single greatest impact on injury reduction of any process. For this reason, developing a safety culture should be a top priority for all businesses. The safety culture of many organisations is "we do it this way because we always have", a positive culture is created by demonstration of effective visible leadership with safety being built in as an integral part daily activity, as opposed to an add on.
Best Practices and Creating a Safety Culture
A positive culture takes time and effort in best practice being "the way we do it here" "safely"
In a strong safety culture, everyone feels responsible for safety; employees go beyond the call of duty to identify unsafe conditions and behaviours and intervene to correct them. For instance, in a strong safety culture, any worker would feel comfortable reminding a senior manager or owner to wear safety glasses.
The active engagement of employers and and managers is essential to the establishment and implementation of an effective safety and health program. Management must:
Establish and communicate policies
Guide their team and employees to set safety and health goals and objectives
Provide needed resources including money, machines, materials, methods, staffing and time; and they must motivate personnel through active participation in and support of safety and health activities.
How can Foresight assist with the development
Foresight have extensive knowledge and experience with culture shift programs which have resulted in accident reduction, increased productivity with the use of and employee engagement and ownership. Culture is the atmosphere created by those beliefs, attitudes, of employees that that shape behaviour.
A fundamental requirement of all Foresight Health and Safety Practitioners is their exceptional communication and influencing skills. These attributes are required at all levels and our practitioners work will with your employees to fully understand your
Management and employee attitudes
Values, myths, and stories
Policies and procedures
Priorities, pressures, responsibilities, and accountability
Action or lack of action to correct unsafe behaviours
Employee training and motivation
Employee involvement or buy-in
The result of developing a positive safety culture will be ownership and pride. Over time the norms and beliefs of the organisation shift focus from eliminating hazards to eliminating unsafe actions and building systems that proactively improve safety and health conditions. Employee safety and doing something the right way takes precedence over short-term production pressures. Simultaneously, production does not suffer but is enhanced due to the level of excellence developed within the organisation.