Creating a strong culture of safety in the workplace

Company culture has a massive impact on many aspects of your company, such as employee morale and even overall productivity. A company with a culture focused on safety reaps even more benefits of creating a healthy and safe work environment. 

Investing the time and resources in creating a culture of safety in the workplace has countless benefits that have a meaningful impact on your business. In fact, OSHA has an entire page filled with scientific research about how investing in safety has far-reaching benefits to your business, such as increased job satisfaction and decreased workers’ compensation claims. 

One of the best ways to promote safety in the workplace is to make health and safety the focal point of your entire company culture. Let’s look further into what safety culture means and how you can start creating a culture of safety in the workplace.

What is safety culture?

Safety culture can be considered the aggregate of the attitudes and behavior of every employee in the company about safety, from the CEO down. A positive safety culture embraces the need for processes and procedures that prevent injuries rather than viewing them as tasks to get through. Rather than hastily complete an inspection, employees will care about how the job impacts the safety of everyone else. 

An excellent safety culture can have a profound impact on the effectiveness of your safety programs. Employees will be engaged when receiving training about new programs, and they’ll constantly be thinking about how they can prevent accidents. A positive and widely-accepted attitude towards health and safety is the ultimate goal of pursuing a safety culture. 

Actionable tips for creating and maintaining a strong safety culture

How can you start building a culture of safety in the workplace? It won’t happen overnight, and it might not be easy, but several concrete steps can be taken to create a safety culture at your company.

Communicate all safety policies

Volumes have been written about the importance of communication in business. Communication is essential in the world of workplace health and safety due to the heavy reliance of employees on understanding policies and procedures. 

Hosting recurring meetings about various topics related to safety is a great way to plant the seeds of a safety culture. Safety policies should be made available digitally and physically that clearly emphasize safety best practices and expectations. 

The purpose of recurring meetings is to emphasize the importance of safety and ensure that employees are aware of safety policies that may impact them.

Provide ongoing quality training programs

Safety training programs should not be one-and-done. Create quality training programs that teach employees how to conduct relevant activities that promote safety properly. Regular revisit older safety topics so that every piece of important information is regularly remembered. 

Additionally, any new equipment or tool should include plenty of safety training before employees are cleared to operate it. That even includes the adoption of a new inspection audit platform that they will be using regularly. Employees unaware of how to properly use software that generates safety data can have severe consequences, both immediately and long term.

Develop positive incident reporting processes

It is vital to your safety culture that employees feel comfortable reporting any incidents that occur. Your company is unable to prevent issues it doesn’t know about. 

Make incident reporting as easy and problem-free as possible to encourage employees to keep doing the right thing. Every employee should know that they aren’t going to receive any negative consequences for reporting an incident. Feeling comfortable reporting incidents is vital to developing a strong safety culture.

Involve every employee

Lack of employee buy-in is a massive problem when it comes to health and safety initiatives. If employees simply don’t care about the processes enough to follow them, even the perfect safety program is doomed to fail. 

One way to increase employee buy-in is to directly involve them in the ongoing creation and refinement of safety programs. Ask them about their ideal incident reporting process and if there’s any equipment that would make them feel safer. Directly including employees in drafting safety policies will increase buy-in and ultimately create a safety culture.

Lead with management’s example

Supervisors at all levels have a considerable influence on how employees feel about safety programs. Leaders that embrace new safety initiatives and follow new processes will set a strong example for the rest of the company. Every manager should be fully aware of current policies and be expected to follow them at all times.

Creating a safety culture for your business is easy with monitorQA

A strong safety culture that permeates your company will have a profound impact on your business. Fewer workers’ compensation claims and missed days due to injuries alone have a meaningful impact on your company’s budget. It’s not always that direct, however, as employees who feel safe at work are typically happier about their jobs, which can increase productivity. 
The business-enhancing benefits of embracing a safety culture will help your company operate at its best. Your company must be equipped with an ideal integrated safety solution so that policies can be based on accurate data. Reach out to us today to discover how our integrated safety platform can help you achieve operational excellence.