Let’s start by defining what is a Safe Workplace Culture. This term describes the attitudes, behaviours, and mindsets of workers, supervisors, managers, and all the stakeholders toward safety in the work environment.
Businesses have different levels of maturity on their safety culture and this relates to the meaning and the
importance of safety in a workplace. If safety is considered a compliance issue, an obligation to endure, training will be boring, requirements of safety would become incomprehensible or impossible to achieve and what is more, injuries and accidents are prone to happen within the workplace.
How to create a safety culture within your workplace
How to create a culture of safety that can be useful for your organization? And, how you can keep Safety top of mind at all times?
While creating a positive safety and healthy culture at work may seem difficult, there are steps you can take towards developing it in a way that can be achievable.
Here are 5 helpful tips you can follow to develop and foster a safe culture in within your workplace:
1. Define Safety within your workplace
State the company’s views on safety and communicate clearly what actions will be accepted, tolerated, or punished. This will give the employees of the organisation an understanding of the workplace culture and the place that safety has within it.
Good safety culture starts with senior management. Lead by example, use protective equipment, participate in training, and recognize and encourage safety behaviours within the workplace.
2. Develop safety procedures, tools and reporting systems
For these tools to be effective, they need to go beyond the prevention of accidents and injuries, but also look at the way work is performed.
Also, seeking the inclusion of employees in creating safety resources will increase hazard & risk awareness and
preventive behaviours.
Make sure to create visual reminders and display them in common areas so it is available to everyone.
3. Invest in safety equipment and training
Adequate safety equipment at work ensures safety and efficiency on the tasks at hand.
Regular hands-on training is extremely crucial in maintaining and developing a safety culture in your workplace.
Opportunities of learning will reduce accidents and improve culture. Furthermore, training with co-workers are
valuable team-building exercises that propagate engagement.
4. Foster open communication and participation
Develop a system for open communication across your workplace so that employees can be informed of new procedures or policies and be confident they can raise safety concerns and issues without repercussions.
Encourage dialogue about Safety among staff and use key moments, such as induction or training to discuss topics with examples. Think of those as opportunities to improve safety and as a team bonding exercise.
5. Review and improve safety policies
Building a safe culture at work is an ongoing process. Establishing a safe culture at work requires constantly and frequently conducting risk assessments, investigating all incidents and near misses, examining the root cause, and seeking feedback from employees about the effectiveness of procedures. That regularity gives the opportunity to review and modify policies that may be stop been useful or need to be updated.
Benefits of a Safety Culture at work
Safe workplace culture is essential for your workplaces performance and should be part of the workplace core
values.
Other proven benefits of workplace safety culture include:
- Increase in employee engagement
- Reduced staff turn over
- Decreased rates of injury or accidents
- Increased employee productivity
Useful Resources
There are various available resources to get you started. Here are some useful links you can tap on:
- Health and Safety Handbooks include many only resources from checklists to templates and policies Health & Safety Handbook
- Safe Work Australia has many resources and publications to get you started Welcome | Safe Work Australia
