How to Foster Employee Engagement in Your Health and Safety Program
Hey there,
Welcome to this week's edition of the Safety First Journal.
This week we're going to look at why employee engagement is critical to your workplace health and safety program and how to foster higher levels of buy-in from your workforce.
Let's dive in.
Here's an uncomfortable truth for many safety managers. You can have the greatest set of workplace safety policies ever written, but those policies and procedures are useless if you can't get your employees to actually follow them.
This is where employee engagement comes in.
Engaged employees are more likely to adhere to safety protocols, proactively identify hazards in your workplace and foster a positive safety culture in your business. This leads to fewer incidents, reduced costs and improved morale.
A meta analysis by the Gallop Organization found a strong correlation between engaged employees and workplace safety. Organizations in the top quartile of engagement scores had nearly 70% fewer accidents than those with engagement scores in the bottom quartile. Organizations with lower scores also showed lower productivity and profitability.
Employees who have bought in to their company's safety culture are more likely to report hazards in the workplace and also more likely to come up with solutions for dealing with them. As a safety professional, this not only helps reduce incidents, it makes your job much easier!
A National Safety Council study found that organizations that prioritize safety resulted in a 30% reduction in absenteeism, along with improved overall performance and morale. When employees see that their workplace is serious about health and safety, they are more likely to follow policies and procedures and report hazards they find, leading to a stronger overall safety culture.
So how do we foster employee engagement?
This is an important question, without a simple answer, but communication is crucial. Employees need to know that their organization cares about their safety and are not just providing lip service. Here are some ideas:
Involve employees in safety planning and decision making. People support what they help to create. When employees have a say in their health and safety programs and initiatives, they are much more likely to buy in.
Make hazard reporting easy and reward it. Have hazard report forms readily available in your workplace and encourage your employees to use them. Employees perform their tasks all day every day. Who better to know what risks are involved and how to prevent them?
Use case studies and visuals as appropriate. Talk to your teams about actual cases where safety initiatives have succeeded or failed and why. People are much more likely to follow a safety program when they know the reasons for it.
Have daily toolbox safety talks to keep safety top of mind. Safety communication is never a one and done process. It requires constant reminders and reinforcement of the message. A daily 5-10 minute safety toolbox talk is a great way to continue reinforcing the message.
Celebrate success rather than punishing failure. One of the challenges of being a safety professional is that you only know when you fail. When an accident happens, you investigate and figure out all the things that went wrong. If things go right, everyone goes home safely at the end of the day and no one notices. It's important to celebrate your successes both as a safety professional and the workplace as a whole. Positive feedback is much more motivating and engaging than criticism.
Employee engagement requires getting to know your employees as people and not just workers. It requires demonstrating that employee concerns are taken into consideration and not just passed off as unimportant. This doesn't mean you implement every employee suggestion, but it does mean you listen carefully, discuss pros and cons and find a way to address the concern.
Spending a little extra really listening and addressing an employee's concerns can pay huge dividends in your company's safety culture and performance in the long run.
Well, we've covered a lot today, I'll leave it there until next week.
If you liked this content, your clients might too. I ghostwrite Educational Email Courses, newsletter content and thought leadership articles for health and safety professionals and I'd love to work with you on building your company's client base and online presence. If you'd like to learn more, contact me at dmoriarity@keystrokecommunications.com or check out my free Educational Email Course at www.safetyproroadmap.com
Till next week,
Cheers,
Dan.