Safety is a vital tool for business owners to protect their employees. It is also necessary to safeguard your company’s bottom line, reduce losses, and achieve and maintain compliance. To ensure this safety is achieved companywide, a culture of safety must be established. However, a true and effective culture of safety is present only if and when each and every employee, no matter the level, is responsible for creating and maintaining a safe work environment.

The following is an overview of the six key components of a safety culture.

1. Leadership Commitment & Investment

Your executive team must set the tone by making safety a top priority, factor it into bottom-line goals and ensure their own commitment is clearly visible. They should provide the resources – time, money and personnel – to achieve results and be actively involved in safety program activities alongside employees. Supervisors and managers must lead by example and ensure that workers are trained or certified, as appropriate.

2. Empowered Employees

All employees must be personally responsible and accountable for workplace safety. For this to happen, they must feel empowered and comfortable reporting unsafe conditions and providing suggestions for improvement without fear of retaliation, intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

3. Methods to Identify & Control Hazards

A concrete and proactive process to find and fix workplace hazards is essential to a culture of safety. An excellent place to start is by conducting a comprehensive safety assessment. Additionally, and more specific to individual tasks and rolls, is completing a Job Safety Analysis (JSA). These inspections should be performed periodically or every time there is a change in equipment or processes that could impact safety.

4. Safety Policies & Procedures

In addition to stating the purpose and goals of your safety program, your policies and procedures should reflect the particular needs of your workplace. They must be stated in clearly understandable terms and explain the reason they are imperative. Ensure they are reviewed at least annually and updated as necessary.

5. Ongoing Communication, Education & Training

To ensure the sustainability of a safety culture, your leadership must remain informed and revise policies and procedures accordingly. Therefore, an efficient and effective communication system must be developed to ensure all employees receive timely updates in a language that is easy to understand. Hand in hand with dissemination of information is ongoing education and training. Even seasoned employees should go through general and job-specific training as new procedures, equipment, etc. are introduced as well as refresher training.

6. Continuous Improvement

An organization with a true safety culture will review the safety program’s strengths and weaknesses on a regular basis. An inspection by a qualified safety professional should be completed at least annually, while internal, ongoing monitoring and measurement should be conducted to identify areas in need of improvements. If implemented correctly, continuous improvement is self-sustaining. When employees drive and achieve gains on a regular basis, it is motivating, builds teamwork and results in organic improvements.

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While developing and maintaining a culture of safety may seem daunting, it will be well worth the effort. Once ingrained in your organization, it will help you reduce losses, remain compliant, and protect your employees and your bottom line. Connect with a member of our team to learn more about how to make safety a standard for your organization.