How to integrate safety into your company culture

Are you confident that safety is integrated into your company’s culture? Companies with strong safety cultures have fewer accidents and injuries, which can lead to lower costs, improved productivity, and higher employee morale.

Demonstrate leadership

If you want your employees to adopt new safety policies, you’ll need to lead the way. Actively demonstrate your commitment to safety by providing guidance and educational tools and setting expectations, roles, and responsibilities for everyone involved.

Furthermore, provide the vision for your safety overhaul. To effect significant changes in a culture, you need to inspire people with your ideas of what those changes will look like.

You and your employees should be able to answer these questions:

• How will individuals’ day-to-day workflows change in response to an increased focus on safety?
• What new roles and responsibilities will workers have to accept?
• How will these changes benefit everyone involved?

Involve your people

You may have your responsibilities squared away, but how will you involve your employees? Even with a clear vision, you won’t create a more safety-minded culture without actively including the people it will affect.

Begin by delegating certain responsibilities to workers in every department. You’re the safety manager, but other people can become liaisons for the workers they know best by gathering information about their peers’ most pressing safety concerns. Delegation not only makes your job easier but also allows everyone’s voice to be heard.

Toolbox talks are another great way to encourage participation and involve as many employees as possible. Brief and informal, these training talks can be held weekly, or even daily, to give workers a chance to voice their biggest concerns. Just a few minutes at the start of each workday can have a major impact when it comes to keeping safety on everyone’s minds.

Process integration

It’s not enough to implement equipment checks, safety training sessions, and regular meetings. To make people more mindful of their safety at all times, new policies and procedures must be carried out during daily tasks. For example, you might ask workers to comment or report on conditions throughout the day or to perform safety checks at stopping points during their shifts. When safety becomes a regular part of the workday, it becomes a major part of the culture.

Review policies regularly

With all the goings-on at any company, it’s easy to let safety policies get stale. Those policies must be relevant to workers’ current needs, so consistent review of policies and making the necessary updates should be top of mind. Addressing new hazards and removing outdated or inefficient policies won’t just lead to a better safety program on paper—they’ll help create a more safety-minded culture by showing employees that you and other safety personnel have their best interests in mind.