Have you noticed an unreasonably lax attitude towards safety in your workplace lately? There are many aspects of workplace culture, but in high-risk environments none are more important than the approach that workers and managers take towards safety. Unfortunately, many workplaces suffer from a view of safety that is far too lackadaisical. Even worse, workers may see proper safety precautions as something that must be done simply to meet regulatory standards or business requirements rather than viewing them as absolute necessities that keep everyone safe on the job.
A safety consultant can potentially help you to identify major issues in your workplace and deal with them before they result in serious injuries. Consider this list of common safety issues to quickly identify if a consultation may already be overdue.
A Belief that Safety Is Unimportant
This is perhaps one of the most endemic symptoms of poor workplace safety culture. If workers or supervisors in your business view safety as a bureaucratic hassle, then it is likely that corners are being cut wherever possible. This is also potentially one of the most difficult attitudes to break, as there is a belief in many industries that safety precautions slow production and lead to a less-efficient workplace. This can sometimes be made worse by substandard personal protective equipment (PPE) that is difficult or uncomfortable to wear.
Unreported or Unexamined Incidents
Have minor accidents in your workplace gone unreported in the past? A key part of a good workplace safety culture is a desire to report incidents as they happen to prevent them from happening in the future. If workers and supervisors are reporting only major accidents, then it is likely that much smaller incidents are happening on a regular basis and going unreported.
Equally important is the need to examine accidents in order to determine why they happened and what can be done to prevent similar incidents in the future. It is a major problem if the focus after any incident is simply to repair damage and quickly get back to work. The aftermath of any incident—small or large—should be seen as an opportunity to improve workplace safety standards.
Lack of Training
Workplaces with good safety culture conduct safety training regularly. More importantly, training should be scrutinized on a regular basis in order to identify areas where it may be lacking. Supervisors should be attempting to evaluate the efficacy of training programs by monitoring worker behavior and adjusting future training sessions to supplement any problems they identify. This desire to iterate on core safety procedures is a major feature of companies with good safety cultures.
To learn more, contact a company like Safety Management Training Solutions.