Employees often take for granted that their workplace environment, daily tasks, and equipment are safe; they assume they’ll leave work as safely as they arrive. Unfortunately, this means that when safety incidents occur they are shocking and unexpected, and can have life-altering consequences.
Workplace safety is more than just a compliance issue – it’s a matter of life and death. According to the United Nations Global Compact, 2.78 million people die each year due to work-related causes. Rather than ticking safety boxes, we want companies to revolutionise their approach to safety by embedding a culture where everyone is totally committed to protecting themselves and others.
Within a strong safety culture, safety is an integral part of daily working life, encompassing not only physical safety but psychological safety, too. It’s been proven that workplaces consistently achieve better safety metrics when people feel confident to speak up.
Where do you start?
Change starts at leadership level. As iosh notes, “Workers are much more likely to get involved and comply with controls if senior management makes it clear that health and safety is taken seriously by your business.” As a leader, if you follow these four simple steps, you’ll start seeing tangible safety improvements – you just need to trust the process.
1. Mindset matters
Self-reflection, curiosity, and emotional intelligence are the foundations of a strong safety culture. When working with our clients, we use tools based on cognitive behavioural therapy to provide simple, practical methods that help people better understand, relate to, and become more aware of themselves and others.
2. Own it
In safe workplaces, everyone understands their responsibility and contributes to a robustly safe environment. This means following safety basics, like wearing PPE, reporting correctly, and staying vigilant. To make safety habits stick, people need ongoing reminders, resources, and routines to reinforce safety as part of everyday behaviour.
3. Speak up
Fostering a psychologically safe, open, and honest ‘Speak Up’ culture, where feedback is encouraged and risks are openly discussed, allows teams to address issues quickly and effectively.
4. Just ask
As leaders, it’s important to create an environment where employees feel safe asking questions and sharing their insights, fostering curiosity and openness. Coaching plays a key role in this, using open-ended questions to encourage feedback, dialogue, and seeking out support.
These foundations are the start of building a safety culture that will transform your company. As The World Health Organisation (WHO) notes, “protecting workers’ health is not only a moral obligation, but also a strategic necessity for economic stability and growth.”
If you’re interested in a comprehensive deep-dive into transforming your safety culture, with practical tips and takeaways you can implement straight away, click here to access our new white paper, ‘Safety culture – Making it human’, or get in touch with us directly to find out how NKD can support you.