Canadian Occupational Safety

You've invested in the proper protection and training. You track safety performance and indicators, but you're still left feeling like there's more you can do; if only you could influence your company's safety culture. Your company's safety culture is within your reach. You can learn how to assess, change and harness your organisation's attitudes and behaviours towards safety, ensuring everyone at your company returns home safe, always. FREE SAFETY CULTURE WEBINAR – REGISTER TODAY! Join us for a free webinar, November 26th, together as we strive to make Canadian workplaces safer. An organisation's safety culture reflects the beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and values that employees and management share when it comes to work- place safety. A strong safety culture doesn't just happen; it's created when a company encourages and motivates its people to make safety their high- est possible priority. It Works From the Top Down You need the right systems in place for a safe work culture, and employees need the right tools to perform their jobs safely. Even more important, though, is a commitment from the highest levels of your organisation that ensures the safety of all per- sonnel. To develop that commitment, it's essential that senior management understands the full cost of workplace incidents. Building the safety leader- ship skills of managers is such a crucial step; their development increases individual and organiza- tional safety commitment and helps translate this commitment into concrete strategies and tactics through tools and techniques. Implemen ng Measures, Tools and Systems If you want to achieve an effective safety culture, you've got to have the means to monitor your or- ganisation's current safety performance, giving you the ability to identify the ways safety can be improved. In addition to identifying areas that need change, the measures you're using to deter- mine success and the means of rewarding people for their performance drive the behaviours you'll see consistently repeated. For example, if employ- ees are encouraged to report near misses but in- dividuals believe someone could be reprimanded for doing something wrong, the actual reporting of near misses may be hindered. ere are times the measure is ineffective because of competing ac- tions – that's why it's so important to review these measures and practices to ensure what your organ- isation is using has the best chance of encouraging the right safety behaviours. Changing Behaviours Just about any worker you ask will tell you that they work as safely as possible and would never behave in a way that would put another person's safety at risk, but is there a different between what the intent was when someone was performing a task, versus actually doing it safely? Safe behaviour can't just Building a Culture of Safety Building a Culture of Safety Safety culture: it's a term that's o en used, but what does it really mean? And what does it mean for your organisa on? be about good intentions. When actions become too routine, your employees may not consistent- ly exercise the correct safety behaviour. Assessing behaviours alone won't change your safety culture, but creating programs and systems that help your employees see the issues personally will help create the safest culture possible. It's Within Your Reach Developing an effective safety culture based on the concepts of continuous improvement, personal commitment and responsibility by all employees, is a long term process involving hard work, dedica- tion and effort. e experience gained through the implementation of a safety culture program can re- sult in behavioural changes in employees, but some other measures may still need to be taken. It is crit- ical that employees understand why the changes are being made; the purpose is not to simply satisfy auditors or legal requirements, but to bring about actual changes in safety behaviour. e safety cul- ture you want is within your reach. Make sure all your employees go home safe, always. For more informa on contact: Michael Douglas Levi -Safety | EHS Training & Consul ng Services michael.douglas@levi -safety.com Register today at www.homesafealways.com ADVERTISEMENT

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