The first stage in improving the level of safety in your workplace is to assess exactly where you are. This is your starting point. Then, you have to recognize the culture that exists in your organization and the factors that have created it. The culture is the sum of the experience, history, belief system, work practices of the people within the organization. Read more…
During the course of my work, I go into many different work sites. Many of them have safety slogans posted on notice boards, in reception and sometimes on the main gate. Some businesses go even further and include their safety slogan on their letterhead and in their e-mails. Read more…
Setting out to modify or change the safety culture in a workplace is a daunting task. Working against you is the custom, practice and habits that have been built up over the years. However, this is not your biggest challenge. The biggest challenge lies in the belief system that occupies everybody’s mind. Read more…
One of the areas which is the subject of a great deal of discussion is the safety culture of an organization. To test the safety culture in your organization can be difficult. If you hold a position of authority, people are likely to give you the answers they think that you want. Read more…
Let me explain about a recent event that illustrates why we have such difficulty creating safer workplaces. No doubt, incidents similar to this occur every day.
This particular company has a large number of trucks and there was an incident that resulted in a driver cutting his head. Read more…
I want you to use all your experience, all your common sense and all your knowledge of human behavior to answer the question. “Who has the most interest and concern about being hurt, injured, maimed or killed at work?” Read more…
There are certain rules of human behavior that must be taken into account when developing a process of safety management. If you violate these rules, you will fail in your objective to develop a safer workplace. Read more…
If you think about safety, it seems that we all have a risk filter. This filter exists in the minds of the people as they work. It is this filter which stops us from doing things which could certainly hurt us. However, the barriers to taking shortcuts are often nullified by the imperative to finish the task or the pressure to behave in a certain way. Read more…
To understand accidents in the workplace it’s necessary to look at them backwards. Whilst this may seem counter-intuitive we can only analyze the events with the benefit of hindsight. This article provides a framework for understanding how these undesirable events occur. For ease of reading I have written the sequence in order. Read more…
Every supervisor, every manager and anybody in a leadership position should understand that poor housekeeping contributes to poor safety. Go and have a look at your workplace and ask yourself these ten questions. Read more…