Safety Communication is Key
When it comes to implementing workplace safety programs, communication is key. This can be anything from the communication between management and employees, through to the communication between departments in the same company. Communication is essential to everything else that goes into a safety culture, but it can be particularly challenging when it comes to WHS. With incidents being reported by employees at a higher rate than ever before, communication can sometimes be challenging. Therefore, when it comes to implementing a positive culture of OHS, ensure that all managers have a good understanding of health and safety policies, and understand how to communicate these policies to their employees. This will help facilitate communication on both a company level and an individual level.
Provide WHS Training
WHS training can be challenging, and it’s even more challenging when you’re trying to implement safety culture when it hasn’t been around before. People hate change, we know that, but it is the way we shape it which determines its outcome. It’s essential that you make OHS training a priority. Utilising a third-party safety training specialist can extremely assist your workplace is developing its culture and way of communicating safety. Workplace HSE consultants can conduct training which will be tailored to your site’s specifications and will ensure that PCBU’s, Officers, managers, workers are well informed on how to communicate health and safety policies to their employees, developing their due diligence in accordance with the WHS Act 2020. It is also important to implement a thorough induction process to ensure gaps are not a factor in health and safety. It’s common sense to understand that good specialist WHS training can shape your workplace positively and provide sustainable production and ROI outcomes.
Develop a Perfect Health and Safety Gameplan
When it comes to implementing a culture of health and safety, you’ll want to put your efforts into one area of your company. That one area is your health and safety gameplan strategy. By developing a perfect WHS gameplan, you’ll be able to ensure that your company is implementing the most important aspects of a culture of WHS. This will help you plan out our safety culture in a comprehensive manner, ensuring that continual improvement and development is positively maintained.
Show you’re Committed in Health and Safety
You’ll need to show that you’re committed. It may be that your company has always operated under a health and safety program and has never had to made any changes. However, it’s almost certain that with more employees reporting incidents than ever before, you’ll now want to inject a culture of workplace safety. With that said, it’s essential that you show that you’re committed to this. This can be done in various ways, such as creating a health and safety policy within your company, holding a health and safety meetings, holding a health and safety day, or holding an employee safety day. Also, introducing a full-time or part-time WHS consultant, will ensure that implementation and maintenance of everything health and safety within the workplace is conducted and due diligence is met through the WHS consultants assisting company PCBU’s and Officers.
Finally, you’ll need to show that the workplace is committed through leading by example. Having a specialist safety consultant who can assist your workplace can ensure that safety culture is filtered from management right down to workers allowing workers to see WHS culture developed and maintained in front of their eyes. This makes culture easier to implement as many will follow a “pack” rather than having individuals trying to implement something here and there.
Conclusion
As you can see, implementing a culture of WHS isn’t as simple as it may seem and is an extensive process. In order to truly implement a culture of health and safety, you’ll need to ensure that all of these aspects and more are implemented successfully within your company. With that said, it’s important that you don’t try and do it all at once. Instead, try and implement a WHS strategy where one aspect is worked on and then gradually build on this. Once your company has a culture of health and safety, it’s easier to maintain it through specialist safety consultants, saving you time, money and mitigating injury, incident and potential prosecutions.
