12 Powerful (But Inexpensive) Ways to Actually Grow Your Safety Culture
There are so many different aspects to safety culture. Today I’m sharing some of my most powerful (but inexpensive) tips for improving your safety culture. Culture work isn’t easy, but your efforts will pay off in the long run!
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Have more safety conversations
If I could offer you only one tip for the future: wear sunscreen (anyone remember this amazing graduation speech?). Either wear sunscreen or floss (ideally both, everyday, without fail). Personal care aside, my number one tip (for safety culture, that is) is to have more safety conversations.
If you are unsure what safety conversations are, or want some great tips on how to have better safety conversations, I highly recommend my free course on Safety Conversations (yes, shameless plug!). The course goes into a lot of detail, but I'll hit the high notes here.
Make sure you are engaging your workforce in positive conversations around safety everyday. Make sure to get their input, ask them questions, and see where they stand on safety at your facility. Safety procedures and training cannot replace real world connections and relationships of trust.
Conversations lead to connections and build trust, which in turn allows you to be 1000% more effective at your job. Results may vary, but go with me on this.
Walk the floor/job site more often
Hint: you cannot have lots of safety conversations or see hazards by sitting in your office or your truck. The real action is out on that production floor or at the job site. Walk around, pretend it’s your very first day on the job, and see what you can see.
You may notice hazards you’ve been walking right past (gee, thanks complacency). Or, you may see workers doing an amazing job at doing things the safe way (cue the “way to go” or other public recognition). Either way, I know you'll make better connections and be doing so much to grow your safety culture. Consistency is key, so make sure you are out there early and often. Walkarounds are always time well spent.
Start every meeting with a safety moment
Make sure every gathering starts with a safety moment. This includes both all-day trainings and ten minute tailgate meetings before work starts. Take a few minutes and bring everyone’s attention to a relevant and important safety topic.
Ask the workers to list hazards they will face during their shift. Make sure visitors are aware of the emergency procedures in case of an evacuation. Start each meeting with something safety related, so everyone knows safety is first. Always.
Need safety moment ideas? Get 31 here for free.
Involve the workers in safety moments
We just talked about making sure every meeting or gathering starts with a safety moment. So, of course, my next suggestion is going to be to involve the workers! In my experience, most people look to the “safety person” for the safety moment. However, I would encourage you to start involving the others.
Ask other employees and workers to provide safety moments. At monthly or quarterly meetings, have different people present on short safety topics. For standups or tailgate/toolbox talks, ask each person to list one hazard they may encounter. Any way you can get others involved is great.
Create a safety team
Next-level employee involvement, here we come! Creating a safety team is a great way to get more workers involved in safety. Having a safety team can also help you get the word out about issues and projects.
Ideally, you’ll want to have each department or area represented on the team. Ensure most members are front-line employee level, not managers and supervisors. Make sure to ask each team member if they have any issues or concerns to bring forward from their areas. Ensure that information discussed during team meetings gets communicated to every department.
Need help implementing some of these tips? I can help.
Have a topic/theme each month
One way to increase engagement and make safety a little more fun is to have a topic or theme for each month. Pick topics that are appropriate for the season. Consider severe weather awareness during tornado season or heat illness at the start of the summer. Other topics like slips trips and falls or hot work can be sprinkled throughout.
You don’t want safety to be routine. However, having a theme allows you to come up with various safety moments and ideas to reinforce key concepts throughout the year.
Engage upper management/leadership in safety
Now we could debate for hours about whether safety starts from the bottom up or the top down. The fact remains that you need to have leadership involved in safety if your safety culture is going to grow.
I could talk ad nauseum about how management/leadership influences the safety culture, but here a few quick things to think about:
You want to know one of the quickest ways to turn your budding safety culture into a dumpster fire? Have your leaders model at-risk behaviors with no consequences. The boss man/lady/person doesn’t wear steel toes on the production floor? Safety must not be that important. Double standards are also a sure fire way to end up in Resentmentville my friend.
Next, you must have your leaders stepping in and coaching the workers when they see at-risk behavior. Please please please, for the love of all things warm and fuzzy, do not have this be a disciplinary issue. At least, not the first time you see the at-risk behavior. I used the word COACHING for a reason. No one intentionally works unsafely and shows up to work hoping to get hurt that day.
Lastly, it’s just as important to have your leaders stepping in to reinforce safe behavior when they see it. Positive reinforcement and recognition do wonders for the morale and employee engagement levels. Use more carrots and less sticks and see what happens.
Ensure every worker has stop work authority
This is another big topic, but the basics are this: make absolutely certain that every worker has stop work authority. This includes visitors and contractors. They need to feel like they can use it too, not just another card to stick in their wallet.
Empowering every person to step in when they feel something is unsafe is incredibly powerful. Many incident investigations of major accidents have found that people knew something wasn’t right, but didn’t feel they could speak up. Make sure that doesn’t happen to your company.
Make incident, near miss, and suggestion reporting easy
If you want them to do it, make it easy. Whether that’s an online tool (could be as simple as a Google Form) or a hard-copy form, make the process easy to complete. I would recommend asking for the most important details first, while their memory is fresh.
Then you can follow up later to get the other information. It’ll keep your form shorter and make it more likely that workers will actually complete it.
Follow through on safety suggestions/action items
When you get safety suggestions, make sure to follow up. Action items can come from incident investigations, safety inspections, or walk arounds. Regardless of where they come from, make sure they get done.
For items that can’t be completed right away, update the affected people so they know the status and the reason for the delay.
Creating a reputation of following up does wonders for your trust factor. It will also encourage workers to keep making suggestions and that's good for everyone.
Share incidents and near misses as learning moments
No one likes when incidents happen, but at least we can learn from them. If you don’t have a robust program for collecting and sharing incidents and near misses, put in place something basic until you can grow your program.
Be sure to present them as learning moments, instead of punitive experiences. The incident or near miss already occurred, so sharing it can prevent similar situations from happening again. Don't forget to include what was done to correct the unsafe situation.
Make safety fun and interesting!
Can we be honest for a minute? Safety is borrringgggg! At least, it can be. OSHA regulations and procedures and work instructions - yawn. Let’s make safety fun and interesting! People remember things better when we involve humor or an interesting story.
Safety is absolutely a serious topic, but it doesn’t take away from the importance if we inject a little humor. Use a gif, or a ridiculous photo of someone using a ladder on a wheely chair. Tell a funny story to underscore the importance of a procedure.
The more enjoyable we make safety, the more likely we will be able to get workers to act safely.