Are you looking to create a conducive workplace?
Productivity and progress is the goal of any brand. However, it’s as important to prioritize workplace safety. This includes substance abuse, violence, and basic safety hazards.
It’s not enough to have safety policies and hazard signs in your workplace. If you want to know how to create a safety culture in the workplace, you need to take action.
With this guide, you’ll learn how to improve the safety culture in the workplace. That way, you’ll reduce the number of injuries that threaten your employees. Read on and find out more.
Make Safety Your Top Priority
Creating a culture of safety in the workplace requires the right attitude. Workers must never feel like working using safe procedures is an obstacle to their tasks. They must feel they can prioritize safety over doing tasks on time and without reprimand.
The most important component of this is how your employees feel. However, how do you make your workforce feel that you prioritize their safety? The answer is simple: effective communication.
In most cases, employees feel like it’s better to take safety risks instead of missing a deadline. When this happens, you must evaluate the effectiveness of your communication. This means your company’s management and workforce must be on the same page.
Sometimes, an innocent and candid comment about urgency can influence your workers. This causes them to work double-time and take shortcuts. As a result, they’re more at risk because they ignore safety practices.
Everyone Must Share the Same Responsibility for Safety
To keep your workforce safe from various hazards, you must be accountable. Does your workplace is complacent and practices ineffective safety procedures? It may lead to lapses in accountability.
Achieving a positive safety culture will show your compassion to your workers. This can create a stronger foundation of trust between you and your workforce. The best part is that this culture will not reprimand or blame other people.
If your workplace runs a high-hazard operation, the safety culture will matter a lot. It’s especially when it has objects and equipment that can injure employees. Take note, 786 incidents of workplace fatalities involve contact with these hazards.
In a toxic workplace, supervisors have little to no concern for their employees. This means you must ensure that these people will take accountability. The result is that they will act according to their sense of responsibility.
Everyone Must Enforce the Safety Culture
Even when your company has a positive safety culture, never forget your employees. Their input is important to ensure it works to decrease accidents. Your safety culture must use their language and tend to their needs as employees.
If employees find safety procedures hard to understand, they will likely ignore them. With this, you must avoid using jargon and other technical terms. If your employees speak another language, ensure that your warning signs have translations.
To achieve a positive safety culture, your procedures must represent your workers’ experiences. The only method of doing this is through their input. Otherwise, you devalue their expertise and experience.
This results in a cultural rift between managers and employees. It’s a situation that further makes communication impossible. With rampant miscommunication, safety incidents are more likely to occur.
Develop and Improve Safety Systems
If your workplace is free from incidents, you may think your safety systems are enough. However, you can’t be complacent. Never wait for the next accident to occur before you question your safety practices.
Challenge your practices every day since it ensures your system continues to be at its best. This will prevent accidents from happening. You can succeed in consistent safety practices with communication, trust, and actionability.
An example of a proactive practice is to integrate impairment tests. This lets you determine and manage safety risks because of various employee conditions. This includes illnesses, fatigue, emotional issues, and more.
Encourage Open and Two-Way Communication
Miscommunication is the bane of a positive workplace safety culture. That’s why you must strive to open communication lines whenever possible. This means you must encourage it and ensure everyone is available.
Meaningful, open communication means using a better medium. It means relying less on memos, bulletin boards, and company emails. Instead, you must encourage everyone to set some time aside for face-to-face conversations.
Never assume that anything less than in-person conversations made important information understandable. Sometimes, animosity can happen if your memo reads as aggressive. The worst part is that not a lot of people read bulletin boards nowadays.
Management Must Play an Active Role in Prioritizing Safety
Leaders must always demonstrate their devotion toward positive safety culture. As most people say, “show, not tell.” Otherwise, your team is likely to mistrust your managers and doubt their intentions.
If employees feel like their managers lack visible presence, they’ll see it as a lack of interest. Also, they must be responsive to safety concerns and suggestions. If they respond in time, employees trust them more.
Do you need more ways to develop a positive safety culture? If so, check out the SDS guidance and learn more.
Don’t Be Negative When Stopping Work Because of Safety
Negative safety culture is more obvious when you punish safety issues. It sends a message that employees will get in trouble if they get hurt. If they feel afraid of making mistakes, your safety becomes stagnant and you won’t have any idea how to improve it.
Promote a Positive Safety Culture in the Workplace Today
Creating a positive safety culture workplace can improve productivity and proves leadership skills. These are some tips you must do to ensure a positive safety culture in the workplace. Use these to ensure that your business remains safe. You can do this while keeping your workforce happy.
Looking for other tips to create a conducive workplace? Check out our other blog posts for more tips on creating a good work environment.
