Building a Safety Culture on the Job Site

Building a safety culture on the job site will not happen overnight.  However, companies that have successfully implemented a new safety culture have followed a similar set of comprehensive steps.  Safety focuses should be moved from reactive to proactive.  We all know what to do in the event of an accident, but it’s more important to know how to prevent the accidents from happening in the first place.  By putting new policies in place, communicating them, and following an implementation structure, any company can significantly reduce safety infractions and accidents.  In the long run, this saves time and money.

Six Elements for Effective Safety Policies

There are tried and true methods for maintaining a safety conscientious work site.  A successful safety culture on a construction site has several facets.

• Using technology to audit and score safety performance
• Training
• Quarterly Corporate Safety Meetings
• Leadership
• Jobsite Gym (which can include stretching and flexing before your work begins)
• Humanization

Humanization is one of the most important aspects.  This makes the policies about the workers, not the company.  At the end of day most employees are working for their families. Therefore, a strong safety program allows worker to go home to them each day.

Implementing New Safety Policies to Foster a Safety Culture

• Define safety tasks: Every individual should know what aspects of safety they are responsible for. From everything to individual safety to safety checks on the site to auditing.  This should include strategies, goals, and tactics for the safety culture.
• Share your safety vision: Everybody should be on an equal level when launching goals and purposes for their safety culture.
• Enforce accountability: Generate a program which holds everyone responsible for being visibly involved, especially managers and administrators.
• Provide plenty of possibilities: Provide diverse options for employees to express questions and concerns involving safety. There should be a chain of command to make sure managers are held accountable for being approachable.
• Report, report, report: Educate employees on the importance of reporting damages, first aids, and close misses. Prepare for an upsurge in episodes if presently there is under-reporting. It will level off after a while.
• Reconstruct the reporting system: Appraising the current reporting system is crucial to make sure you conduct surveys in an operative method. This should help get to the root basis of incidents.
• Build confidence: When things start to change on the work site, it is important to keep the foundations calm. Building trust will help everyone work together to see improvements.

Communication is Key

Communication is a very important and vital step in guaranteeing that safety is important in a company.  Therefore, creating and delivering steps for safety is not enough to build a safety culture.  From the top down, everyone must talk safety daily.  Contractors and managers are responsible for starting this communication.  From here, foster an environment that encourages employees to discuss safety on the site and offer opinions and suggestions for its improvement.  On top of talking safety, every contractor and manager should be able to demonstrate safety actions from proper stretching to how to put on a safety harness. Through demonstration you show that you care about your workers safety.  You must communicate and show your employees how to be safe and not just give them a list on a piece of paper to follow.

“Helping our clients get jobs done since 1998.”