Injury and Risk Prevention
A true safety culture is difficult to achieve—and virtually impossible to sustain without an overall workplace culture that fosters positive relationships and outcomes in which safety programs and policies are baked in to the day-to-day operations. But striving for an injury-free program is a worthwhile investment that will eventually pay for itself, enabling you to save your employees pain and loss wages, and prevent lost production and decrease stress. A culture of safety allows you to excel in serving tenants, customers, residents and visitors in the ways that matters most.
Here’s how to get there.
Incorporate job safety/hazard analysis. Inspections, audits, and surveys should include risk and hazard assessments, permit to work audits, and job safety analysis audits. Creating a culture of safety means including a documented safety audit at every site visit—no exceptions.
Discourage shortcuts. Taking shortcuts is a very human reaction that, in our heads, is about being more efficient. However, cutting corners is often an impulsive decision. Counteracting that inclination requires training, refreshers, reminders, and behavior checks in the moment.
Create a culture that rewards doing things right. Deadlines should never take precedence over safety. Make sure employees, supervisors and managers prioritize a job well done over a rushed job. Recognize them for taking the time to do the task right the first time, not the second.
Support a team culture that allows for checks and balances. Since safety is everyone’s job, you should encourage employees to step in when they see a coworker cutting corners, taking risks, or prioritizing speed over attentiveness. Saying “Let me get you a dolly,” might feel awkward, but it’s much better than dealing with the aftermath of a preventable injury. Engaged management from the CEO to your hourly employees will help foster this team culture.
Make reminders visual. Use signs and drawings to remind people there’s a right — and wrong — way to approach tasks. Consider jobs which are vulnerable to corner-cutting and create a bold campaign that gets attention. Once these high-risk tasks are known, share them with the larger workforce, not just your team.
Look at leading indicators. Leading indicators can help us predict problems and counter the habits that make us fallible. These include paying attention to data like changes in safety ratings, risk assessment ratings, as well as observed behaviors like the percentage of people wearing hard hats on a site.
Don’t discount near misses. To prevent today’s near miss from becoming tomorrow’s accident, encourage employees to report them. Review the near miss and any related behavior that explains it with the rest of your staff so they can avoid similar situations down the road. Reward employees are highlighting a near-miss is the first test in foster a healthy relationship of reporting them to supervisors.
Share lessons learned. Taking corrective action after an incident is essential. Consider what follow up your organization takes, beyond reporting, and ensure you are taking steps to share lessons learned with current and future employees.
Cultural change around safety requires open, ongoing, and targeted communication. Rewarding consistently safe behaviors, conducting trainings, offering employee surveys about safety and tracking training completion rates are all elements of a strong injury prevention plan.