Safety Week 2021: ‘Anticipate, prepare and respond to crises: Invest now in resilient occupational safety and health systems’   Safety culture – Training – Awareness in the workplace   |20 October 2021

Understanding safety culture

We hear about safety culture, but maybe not enough. What is it really?

Understanding what influences the safety culture of an organisation can make a significant contribution to changing employee attitudes and behaviours in relation to workplace health and safety. For a safety culture to be successful it needs to be led from the top.

This commitment and involvement from the top down is very important as it is generally agreed that safety culture improvement is driven by senior leaders.

Safety culture needs to be embraced and practised by all, from the CEO to the officers. Strong leadership and management commitment is directly related to safety performance as it demonstrates by example to employees what actions will be rewarded, tolerated or punished, which in turn influences what actions and behaviour employees initiate and maintain.

What is a safety culture? A safety culture is an organizational culture that places a high level of importance on safety beliefs, values and attitudes – and these are shared by the majority of people within a workplace. It can be characterised

as ‘the way we do things around here’. A positive safety culture can result in improved workplace health and safety (WHS) and organisational performance.

To be a safety role model, we have to ask ourselves:

• How important is safety?

• Is safety important most of the time or all of the time?

• Is it okay to compromise on safety if it’s going to be more expensive?

Companies that want to have a positive safety culture, which everyone owns, should develop and train all its employees, including the top managers and ensure to promote managers with the right knowledge, skills and attitudes to successfully undertake the responsibilities of the safety and to lead by example with the rest of the team.

As a business we can ask ourselves, what are the benefit of a safety culture, as it involves a series of restructuration and new ways to operate.

The answer is simple. The business will GAIN confidence in safety and compliance, BUILD an efficiency and high return in productivity, REDUCE the number of workplace accidents, injuries and damages, and reduce the cost of

insurances premium, worker compensations, and reduce also the need of replacing damaged machinery and equipment.

To be able to have a fully operational Occupational Health and Safety system which is the best way to introduce a safety culture in a workplace, there are a series of steps that are most important:

• Set up policies and objectives;

• Ensure to have OHS risk assessments;

• Establish safety assurance and

• Implement a series of safety promotions through Training and Awareness

TRAINING and AWARENESS in OHS

The first step is to define the difference between awareness and training. Awareness is the state of simply knowing something through observation – like creating workshops, short awareness campaign in the work place, briefing and other similar techniques; training is the more intensive process of learning processes and methods to deal with a specific situation.

Training is the key for a successful organisation, providing training and development to employees allows employers to pinpoint the knowledge and skills they want their employees to have. Training and development programmes can educate employees about new skills or provide updates on existing skills to

enhance productivity. By training the employees on the standard operating procedures, new programmes or even on already operational practices, will ensure to have uniformity of work processes. Workers will be more conscious of the need to apply and follow procedure and prevent complacency. Training will

help the business to reduce wastages; when an employee is trained properly and with consistency (refreshers) they will learn to make good, safe and economical use of the company’s property and material, tools and equipment. Accidents and equipment damage will be minimised reducing the quantity of waste.

Another important point to highlight on the benefit or training is to point out the

reduce need of supervision, as you will be empowering your employee to be more responsible and conscious – this will not mean no supervision at all, just a bit less intensive supervision.

Lately we have heard the importance to promote locals in key positions; to be able to do so and have a safe and successful business, it is important to keep in the focus on the people who can deliver, who are passionate and who demonstrate the willingness to go forward. When an organisation needs professionals, with specific skills that can be learned only or mainly in your organisation, is not easy to go on the labour market to find it. As a business you will need to look at your workforce, and select the promising staff members who can be promoted after they are trained and demonstrate their new skills

needed by the organisation.

The importance of a set training system in an organisation will also boost the morale of your employees.

Feeling being part of a supportive work environment where an employee is appreciated, will boost the morale and make them approach their job duties with more self-confidence.

As part of the OHS management system, implementation of a safety culture, training is one of the main pillars, whereby a good training programme will always help employees to get acquainted with their organisation’s ethic, values, policies, visions, missions and all related aspects of safety in the workplace.

There are many other benefits out of a good training programme in a work place, like:

• Improved organisational structure

• Improved customer valuation

• Better workplace environment

• Improved and update technology

By Tina Hoarau, Safety and Standards Consultancy and Training Agency for Occupational Safety Board