The best companies are ones where employees care about interests beyond their own and connect deeply to the meaning of their work. This leads to a healthy culture within the organisation, with the safety of all concerned a paramount value.
For supervisors and safety managers, SafeStart provides practical strategies and skills to secure worker support when it comes to safety. A common vision that is rooted in the SafeStart methodology means that the safety culture in an organisation will be both fortified and deepened over the long term.
A Common Language for Safety
SafeStart delivers a common vocabulary and promotes a non-judgemental approach in which blame is never inferred and effective safety conversations are the norm. As a result, all members of an organisation, from executives to contractors, are empowered with non-judgmental terminology to address a particular issue. Now, when a supervisor calls out “eyes on task”, there is no ambiguity in play: remaining focused will minimise the worker’s injury risk. The words will not be perceived as reproachful or judgmental, and any potential confusion concerning the matter in hand will be extinguished.
This common language, underpinned by shared experiences through field practice or storytelling at safety sessions, naturally produces more productive and indeed skilful conversations in the area.
Leadership
Management support is vital and can make or break any attempt to transform safety culture in a company: without executive buy-in, members of other teams will falter.
Likewise, workers that see commitment to safety at the highest levels will come on board enthusiastically, especially if they feel that those running the organisation are aware of their people’s well-being around the clock. In turn, this broadening of concern is returned with interest since it directly impacts costly vulnerability to error.
Since SafeStart avoids finger-pointing solutions and, among other things, supports the building of safety awareness, it helps all concerned to cultivate improved habits: the emphasis therefore shifts to prevention rather than cure – or punishment. In addition, the programme also gives managers the resources needed to develop worker skills that undercut the negative consequences, in any situation and at any time, of individuals undertaking tasks when feeling rushed, frustrated, fatigued or complacent.
Employee Commitment
Our long experience has taught us that the traditional, bureaucratic approach to workplace safety does work but can only get us so far. Organisations need to look beyond risk and hazard to the person and to the human factors that impact that person.
SafeStart is designed to protect people around the clock and give them the requisite skills to heighten awareness and minimise injury-causing errors. Helping people to reflect on and improve their personal approach to safety in every part of their lives naturally opens them up to taking new skills on board and reforming habits. As a result, the wider Safety Culture in an organisation is revolutionised, necessarily leading to costs falling and the avoidance of productivity loss.
To discover more about Culture Change, please take a look at the article on Safety Culture and Organisational Change.
You can also read the many Case Studies of clients describing the permanent benefits SafeStart has made in the culture of their own organisations.