One of the main reasons that accidents occur in the workplace is that there is a poor safety culture in place. Improving safety culture involves changing the attitude towards health and safety throughout the workplace and employers can achieve this with a few simple steps.
Unfortunately, accidents occur in the workplace quite frequently. Some of these are minor, while many fall into the major category. The best way to avoid any major accident is to improve the safety culture at work. The process involves improving the attitude to health and safety at every level of the company. It can be quite a challenge, but here are a few tips that will help any business in any industry to improve their safety culture:
Schedule a Health & Safety Meeting
A regular meeting where you can discuss health and safety at work is vital for any workplace. In the meeting, you can discuss and ask employees what they believe the risks are in their role and how they feel that you could improve safety at work. With this information, you can then make any necessary adjustments. To keep health and safety prominent, you could hold these meetings on a regular basis so that everybody has a platform to air their views.
Open Communication
In addition to having regular meetings, it is vital that your employees know whom to contact if they have an issue. Appoint a health and safety officer and encourage your employees to go directly to him with any concerns that they may have.
Days without an Accident
Nobody wants to cause an accident in the workplace, but it is easy to be careless when there is not a strong safety culture in place. One excellent tip is to have an “X days without an accident” sign – this will keep everybody focused and will instil a feeling of motivation. You could even have rewards for every milestone you reach after a certain number of days.
Signs
One of the easiest ways to increase safety culture is through the use of signs around the workplace. A first aid sign, fire exit sign, emergency call point sign and other similar signs not only educate people on how to act in the case of emergencies, but they also keep safety at the forefront of their mind.
Reports
Encourage your employees to report any accident or injury no matter how big or small. Not only does this allow you to take action to stop the accident from occurring again, but it also promotes communication regarding safety in the workplace.
Celebrate Achievements
Once you begin to see an improvement in safety culture throughout the workplace, be sure to keep employees motivated by celebrating this achievement. You could do so in the form of a social event after work hours or by having a party right there inside the office premises.
Improving safety culture in the workplace is the best way to reduce the chance of any accident irrespective if it’s big or small. Even employers should contribute in making the workplace secure in the best possible way.