AUGUST 2019 | 41
Installer Support
Installer Support is
sponsored by Kayflow
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 im-
prove your culture of site safety, it’s
crucial to work towards aiding your
staff’s mental health. By 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 oth-
er’s mental health and wellbeing.
3. Lead by example
It goes without saying that if an
employee knows that their manag-
er 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.
4. Training
Making sure your team is fully
trained in site safety is crucial
to ensure that workers are fully
knowledgable in safety proce-
dures. 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 cours-
es 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.
5. Reporting
Of the estimated 58,000 work-
place injuries between 2017 and
2018, only 4,919 were officially
reported; meaning over 90% of
non-fatal injuries were left unre-
ported.
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 incen-
tive 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 goals. Em-
ployees 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.
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 precau-
tions.
By running regular safety sem-
inars, your team can voice their
own safety concerns. This open
style of contribution gives work-
ers the chance to help implement
safety changes that affect their
own roles, making them much
more likely to follow them and
encourage others.
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 imple-
menting. However, it’s not just a
case of putting on a training ses-
sion and expecting to see results.
To develop a genuinely progres-
sive 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 prob-
lems 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.
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