Developing a resilient office safety culture should be an essential part of any company or organization’s long-term goals. A company or organization with an active safety culture provides an abundance of safety training and development opportunities for all employees to ensure everyone has a chance to learn best practices.
Safety Culture Values
A safety culture consists of shared principles, practices and beliefs that exist at an organization or company, and form an atmosphere of approaches that positively shape behavior. An organization’s safety culture is a result of the following factors:
- Management and employee ideologies and beliefs
- Management and employee attitudes toward safety
- Myths and assumptions
- Policies and procedures
- Supervisor priorities, responsibilities, and accountability
- Actions or lack thereof to correct unsafe behaviors
- Employee training and development
- Employee involvement and buy-in during the process
A company or organization should emphasize the importance of attending regular safety and emergency response training sessions to make sure all employees are prepared.
Tips to Promote a Safety Culture at your Company
- Develop a site safety plan including key policies, goals, measures, and strategic and operational plans.
- Encourage all employees to watch out for others. In doing so, promote safety responsibilities for all levels of the organization.
- Provide regular safety training sessions and host emergency response training.
- Align management and supervisors by establishing a shared vision of safety and security goals
- If possible, management should make themselves available during worker orientation and introduction sessions to share values of workplace safety.
- The company or organization should demonstrate a commitment to employee safety by implementing safe work practices and advocating a mentality that unsafe actions are not acceptable.
- Make safety a regular part of workplace communications.
- Provide an open line of communication that encourages employees to report safety concerns that they encounter and have a system that allows responses to be made in a timely fashion.
- Develop a system for tracking and ensuring the timeliness of safety issues.
- Revise incentives and disciplinary systems to accommodate safety concerns.
As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).