The importance of creating a robust safety culture for your organization cannot be overstated. By fostering a safe work environment, organizations can protect and retain their employees, increase efficiency, and avoid costly litigation brought on by workplace accidents.
Creating a culture of workplace safety starts with organizational leadership. An organization that prides itself on keeping employees, suppliers and customers safe will invest a great deal of time and energy in defining its safety values in behavioral terms, modeling those safety behaviors, and holding everyone in the organization accountable for those safety behaviors.
Safety policies, safety training and personal protective equipment are all vital tools for ensuring safety in the workplace. However, without safety communication, their usefulness tends to fall by the wayside. Just as the commitment for continued safety training must come from the top, organizational leadership must also support safety communications.
While organizational leadership has an important role to play, ultimately the responsibility of improving safety and health belongs to every member of the organization. When employees do not understand the importance of following safety policies, accidents happen. The challenge with communicating safety information arises because of the many communication channels available to employees. The myriad ways of communicating safety messages to employees can make delivering those messages consistently difficult for employers.
Today’s workforce comprises a cross-generational mix of Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials/GenY, and Generation Z or, Centennials. All these groups have different learning habits and are accustomed to communicating in different ways. Baby Boomers, born in the 1940s to 1960s, generally like to avoid meetings and are exiting the workforce, taking with them their knowledge. Generation Xers—those born in the 1970s—prefer face-to-face communications, and yet are more techno-literate than previous generations. And millennials, born in the 1980s and 1990s and entering the workforce in droves, are extremely tech savvy multitaskers that want feedback and work-life balance and would rather see things on a computer screen than in a conference room.
All these people with different learning preferences create a dilemma for employers trying to create a safety culture. Send safety information in a long, straightforward memo and you alienate or bore your millennials; put it all in an interactive, online forum and you might lose your older workers. What is the best way to communicate with everyone and make sure your organization is meeting its safety training goals? The solution is a multi-faceted approach.
Gathering employees in a room and presenting a topic is not the only way to communicate. At the completion of the meeting, you need to continue reinforcing your safety presentation. Besides safety training and safety committee meetings, the following methods are perfect ways to get your message to your employees and to keep previously discussed safety information fresh:
To assist organizations communicate with employees of all ages and experience, Christian Brothers Risk Management Services has developed the Safety Communication and Awareness 365 Tool Kit. This free tool kit provides organizations with a series of timely, informative and useful topics that cover a wide range of safety issues and helps develop or improve upon the safety awareness of employees by increasing their understanding of safety concepts, practices and policies, ¬resulting in reduced worker’s compensation claims, improved efficiency and better employee relations.
Topics included in the tool kit include, Why Communication is Important; Where to Start; A Guide to Presenting Your Topic; Various Methods Organizations used to Communicate Safety, and Deciding on a Topic. There is also a template you can use to organize your meeting, get you prepared and help you stay on target once the meeting begins. Sample safety chats which provide a guide to running a successful safety training meeting are also included.
The tool kit also includes an array of safety sheets on topics ranging from ladder safety tips and back injury prevention, to weather hazards and driving safety tips. These sheets are perfect for bulletin boards or inclusion in email safety communications to employees.
Effective communication will help improve workplace safety and prevent accidents and illness at your organization. Using the Safety Communication and Awareness 365 Tool Kit will help you effectively communicate your safety message while allowing you to interact with employees, and provide a way to speak about safety and to listen to their thoughts, concerns and suggestions.
The Safety Communication and Awareness 365 Tool Kit provides organizations with a series of timely, informative and useful topics
