Clearview National September 2019 - Issue 214 | Page 77

PROUD SPONSOR OF INSTALLER SUPPORT
Here are a few small steps you can take
to make sure your business is optimising its
culture of safety:
1. COMMUNICATE
A lack of communication can hamper any
attempts to develop your culture of workplace
safety. Being open and honest with your
employees about why new changes are being
implemented at work is the easiest way to help
them understand the necessity.
The more transparent you are as a manager,
the more likely your staff will help health and
safety updates run smoothly. However, it’s not
just about communicating changes to your
team: all current health and safety guidelines
should be easily accessible to ensure everyone
remains knowledgeable and up to date.
2. MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT
Construction workers have seen a serious
problem with the condition of their mental
health which has been a continuous issue
for the industry over the years. Whether it’s
depression, anxiety or stress, the industry
suffered 14,000 cases between 2017 and
2018.
If you’re making strides to improve your
culture of site safety, it’s crucial to work
towards aiding your staff’s mental health. By
INSTALLERSUPPORT
providing further education and creating an
environment that employees feel safe to open
up and speak their mind, your workers will
develop their own support system to protect
each other’s mental health and wellbeing. goals. Employees are more likely to respond
positively to working towards their team’s own
targets, rather than those set by executives who
may be out of touch with their day-to-day
operations.
3. LEAD BY EXAMPLE
It goes without saying that if an employee
knows that their manager doesn’t care whether
health and safety procedures are followed,
then they’re not going to follow them. This
toxic behaviour will quickly disintegrate any
attempt to create a culture of site safety.
When it comes to safety, you need to walk
the walk. Show your team how important it
is to adhere to safety standards by following
them to the letter yourself. Your employees are
far more likely to follow in your footsteps than
to just take your word for it. 6. GET THE TEAM INVOLVED
As site safety affects everyone, it’s only
right that your employees should get to help
shape your culture. The more you give your
staff the opportunity to participate in safety
initiatives, the more likely they are to adhere
to precautions.
By running regular safety seminars, your
team can voice their own safety concerns. This
open style of contribution gives workers the
chance to help implement safety changes that
affect their own roles, making them much more
likely to follow them and encourage others.
4. TRAINING
Making sure your team is fully trained in
site safety is crucial to ensure that workers are
fully knowledgable in safety procedures. With
the correct training, you’ll have peace of mind
that they know how to perform their jobs
safely and correctly.
Review key training sessions and organise
refresher courses often to reinforce key safety
issues. With a fully trained team of safety
experts at your disposal, your employees will
be able to spot potential hazards before they
become accidents. HOW TO MANAGE CHANGE
Now that you’ve got an idea of some of
the ways you can change your businesses
safety culture for the better, you can start
implementing. However, it’s not just a case of
putting on a training session and expecting to
see results. To develop a genuinely progressive
culture of site safety, you need to be always
aware of what health and safety measures are
in place and what needs to change.
Following the generic model of change, you
can see how it relates to your business and
how it refers to successful safety culture:
1. Recognise the need for change - This is
the moment you realise that your current
health and safety standards aren’t cutting it
and that improvements need to be made.
2. Diagnose what needs to change - At this
stage, you’ll pinpoint specifically which
health and safety measures and issues are
causing problems for your business.
3. Plan for, and prepare to change - With
your problems discovered, you’ll then
design exactly what you need to do to
improve and how you’ll do it.
4. Implement the change - This is when
all your planning and preparation
comes into place and you put into
place the solution to the problems you
discovered.
5. Sustain the change - Often neglected,
this stage is one of the most important.
This is where you need to ensure your
initiatives are followed and the culture
of site safety you’ve created remains at a
high level.
5. REPORTING
Of the estimated 58,000 workplace injuries
between 2017 and 2018, only 4,919 were
officially reported; meaning over 90% of non-
fatal injuries were left unreported.
Reporting incidents shouldn’t be something
that employees fear or feel uncomfortable
doing. You need to make it clear to your
employees that accident reporting isn’t an
excuse to scold but rather to find out what
caused an injury and what can be done to
prevent it from happening in the future. By
making proper reporting a core value of your
worker’s job description, it will become like
second nature to them.
Incentivising accident reports through
prizes or monetary bonuses is a common
action that managers take but the results may
be counterintuitive. Safety incentive programs
become routine and many employees become
entitled; believing they deserve rewarding for
carrying out their jobs.
Rather than trying to ‘buy’ your staff with
incentives, allow them to set their own safety
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