A strong safety culture can truly help you create a safer work environment for all employees. When safety is at the forefront, the right processes and procedures are put in place to help quickly mitigate risks and hazards. This results in a more proactive approach to safety across your organization.
To do this effectively, it’s important to build strong partnerships with leadership teams and your front-line workforce. Our third webinar in a five-part series, Cultivating strong partnerships with operational leaders and management to improve safety culture, dives into this very topic (and more!) with experts in the industry.
Meet Kelli Swain, a global environmental, health, safety and sustainability (EHS&S) leader who excels in the US Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) landscapes, in addition to VPP and ISO 14001 management systems.
Rob Chraska, an EcoOnline customer and Director of Corporate Safety at Lipari Foods with over 15 years' of experience as a safety professional, also joined us. An expert in helping companies improve their EHS processes and safety culture, Rob has helped organizations reduce worker’s compensation insurance expenditures by 65% within one year and achieve a 46% reduction in lost time incidents.
Bringing her technological expertise to the webinar, our very own Grace Evans, Senior Solutions Consultant, has 13 years' experience working with our EcoOnline customers and prospects to help them fully leverage software to improve workplace safety and regulatory compliance.
Keep reading to gain expert insights into:
According to Kelli Swain, one of the first things you must do is establish a baseline with your leadership team. “Building that relationship is truly a business skill to win the trust and engagement of that leadership team,” said Swain. So, how do you do it?
Swain recommends starting on a personal level, and then moving into what that baseline could look like from a work perspective. For instance, you could ask leaders questions like: What keeps you up at night? What are your biggest concerns when it comes to the business? What does safety mean to you? What does a safe working environment look like?
When you learn what is most meaningful and important to them, you can better understand their challenges to help you align your goals in the same direction.
Rob Chraska adds that building this relationship with your employees is also crucial to building a strong safety culture. So, get to know your teams through personal conversations to understand what they like to do and what motivates them. “It’s about the person and not about just the business,” he shared.
Chraska adds it’s important for employees to understand your safety goals and what’s in it for them, including reducing their challenges and helping solve their main problems on-site. Finally, help establish a positive baseline with your employees. Chraska advises that, as a leader, if you make a commitment to your workforce, it’s vital that you follow up and follow through to show your employees you mean what you say.
Part of cultivating a strong safety culture is prioritizing risk. Safety professionals do this daily by carrying out regular risk and hazard assessments. They also look at elements like employee feedback, risk reduction methods, and cost/time benefits. This collection of data helps you quantify risk to gain greater transparency into your safety performance. But what does this have to do with building relationships with your leaders?
Swain shared that one way to engage leaders and get them on board is by documenting, analyzing, and communicating this analysis through reports. This helps them understand what’s going on on-site, what the biggest risks are, and what their personal and business liability may be. This shows the leadership team that you are looking out for their best interests, as well as business continuity and company reputation in the market.
Once you have the data, you can start to develop key performance indicators, both leading and lagging. Here’s what Swain recommends when it comes to using this data to mitigate risks and establish company goals and maturity:
Chraska dives into how to influence and manage your relationships with people inside and outside your reporting structure. One way to do this is by identifying different people who could help improve your safety culture and program. These are people who know how to get things done and navigate the system in the workplace for optimal results. Chraska suggests partnering with these people to get their buy-in (and consequently the buy-in of others) to help push the success of your initiatives and build a stronger safety culture.
Next, craft your message according to your audience. From front-line workers to the CEO, what you say should be tailored to the listener. It’s also important to understand how your message can impact your safety culture. When you want to change culture, it’s important to not be seen as the “safety police” by telling people what they’ve done wrong. Your goal should be to understand why they’re doing something and how you can improve it for them.
Another way to influence and build these relationships is by getting everyone involved. This helps team members like front-line workers, managers, and senior leaders understand what you’re trying to achieve. Chraska suggested getting their input and feedback when it comes to issues on site, as this will help them realize the pivotal role they play in a strong safety culture.
Continue to show your involvement by walking the floor and talking to individuals regularly. When your employees see your dedication and commitment to safety and their well-being, it will go a long way.
Finally, it’s important to identify what Chraska calls your “force multipliers”. These change agents are people who can dramatically amplify what you’re trying to do. With these people on your side having an impact on peers to support your message, you can truly start to see a positive change in your culture. You can also choose to select these people and train them to help you build a stronger safety culture.
Many leaders may be resistant to change, so explain why things need to change in terms of building a stronger safety culture. One way to do this is by showing performance measures such as leading and lagging indicators and demonstrating their impact on the business and employee well-being. You can also discuss costs in terms of company profits and losses.
For example, show the cost of injuries or lost time incidents and what is needed to recover the cost of that loss. With this message in mind, leaders can be more inclined to understand your motivation for building a stronger safety culture.
Next, learn to “speak business”. Watch as Chraska describes what this means in addition to how you can reinforce your message:
How can you streamline worker safety and participation to help build your safety culture? Grace Evans described how EcoOnline’s EHS task-based mobile app and QR quick reporting can help simplify this process.
Our EHS task-based mobile app gives frontline workers and supervisors a snapshot of all the safety activities they need to do in one place, helping them stay on top of all their tasks. You can also quickly report hazards and near misses with our QR quick reporting. Simply scan the code and report a hazard, near miss, or incident directly into your system in real time! These tools can empower your employees to improve safety participation, building a stronger safety culture at your organization.
Our EHS dashboards and reports can also help enhance your safety culture through simplified reporting processes to gain better visibility into your safety performance. Watch Grace as she dives into this topic:
Having this live data at your fingertips helps not only you, but your leaders and employees, understand such important aspects of the business easily to take the steps necessary to make improvements.
Building partnerships and fostering a strong safety culture can be challenging, but hopefully, with such expert analysis, you’re well on your way to making this happen at your organization.
Think of Chraska’s following words of wisdom to keep you motivated, “Culture change and culture adoption is not an overnight process. It takes a long time... but persistence is key... Always be strategic, thinking of what move will get you to the next level, and just hang in there. You will develop these things within your team members and get that going.”
Want to get more expert insight into this topic? Watch our on-demand webinar, Cultivating strong partnerships with operational leaders and management to improve safety culture, now.