Most business owners understand, at least loosely, that safety is important. The obvious benefit of safety in business is that you can reduce the likelihood of injuries, accidents, and deaths in your workplace. If your aim is to reduce harm, it’s a no-brainer. However, improving the safety of your organization also carries other benefits, like helping you maintain your reputation, improving employee retention and morale, and even saving money on insurance.
There are practical ways you can make your organization safer, such as removing hazards, installing fences, and making personal protective equipment (PPE) more available. However, if you want to help your organization achieve maximum safety, you also need a safety culture.
What are the pillars of establishing a safety culture, and why does it matter so much?
Why Does Safety Culture Matter?
Safety culture is a set of intrinsic values, beliefs, and standards within your organization that encourages people to act with safety as the top priority. In an organization with an active safety culture, employees freely and voluntarily choose to take safe actions and avoid dangerous ones, even when they aren’t being directly supervised or told what to do.
Safety culture is important because it modulates employee behavior in ways that ordinary rules and protocols can’t. It’s a way of maximizing the likelihood that all your safety precautions will be followed and properly utilized.
The Plan
One of the most important fundamental pillars of safety culture is an overarching plan or vision for safety within your organization. In other words, you should have thorough documentation covering why safety is important, how it should be applied, and how people should think about safety within your organization. With this formal plan in place, you’ll have a much easier time executing your safety culture strategy.
Working with an external safety partner could be the right solution. With a team of safety specialists, you can easily audit safety standards within your organization, examine weak points, and eventually put in new standards and values to make your business safer.
The Core Values
Another keystone of your safety culture is your organization’s core values. While it’s true that some employees may not pay attention or care much about your core values, many of your employees will aspire to uphold your company core values, even if they aren’t fully conscious of it. If you include safety, discipline, and respect as core values within your organization, you’ll filter out people who don’t hold these core values individually – and naturally attract and retain more people who do.
The New Hires
You should also implement safety consciousness and awareness into your recruiting and hiring strategies. If you make a concentrated effort to hire and keep people who are naturally inclined to make safety a top priority, it’s only natural that your organization will become safer. During interviews, be sure to ask employees about their thoughts, values, and philosophies regarding safety.
The Environment
Improve the workplace environment to keep safety culture top of mind and casually reinforce it.
For example:
- Signs. Simple signs that list your core values or remind employees about the importance of safety can make a big impact.
- Reminders and instructions. Provide employees with instructions and important safety reminders for specific tasks or locations.
- Available equipment. Always make sure employees have access to the equipment and resources they need to stay safe – especially properly fitted PPE for tasks that require it.
- Openness and transparency. Finally, work proactively to create an environment of openness and transparency. Your safety culture isn’t going to stick unless employees feel safe expressing concerns, reporting violations, and making recommendations for how the workplace can be safer.
The Leadership
When it comes to culture, things tend to flow from the top down. In other words, the actions and attitudes of your leaders will eventually make their way into your employees at the ground level. Make sure all your leaders and supervisors hold appropriate attitudes concerning safety – and that they set a good example for the rest of your employees.
The Enforcement
Finally, consider the enforcement of your safety policies.
- Reminders and check-ins. Periodic safety meetings can help employees remember how important safety is to your organization – and remind them of your most important safety protocols.
- Disciplinary action. If and when employees violate safety policies, show that it matters by imposing disciplinary action.
- Rewards and praise. If and when employees demonstrate a commitment to safety above all else, reward and praise them publicly so other employees are more likely to follow suit.
Establishing a safety culture isn’t always easy, especially if you’ve been doing things a certain way for many years. But the sooner you start making proactive changes to your company’s underlying culture, the sooner you can start reaping the benefits of greater organizational safety.
