Ensuring Your Employees Understand OH&S Policies
Date Posted:2 September 2016
We’ve written before about great ways to make your workplace safer, and of course there are a lot of safety standards and regulations your workplace must meet legally. From properly handling hazardous materials to accessing mezzanine floors, safety policies are the key to avoiding injury. But the best safety policies in the world can only be effective if they are understood, embraced, and put into practice by your team.
Collaborate with Your Employees
One of the most important ways to get your workers to care about and follow safety regulations is to let them have a say in creating them and empowering them with training and education. Read through our guide to get some ideas on how to get employees to think about safety in your workplace.
Provide Your Team with Knowledge, Control, and Support
Provide your employees with the knowledge they need to fully understand the policies that you put in place, along with the power to enact changes. Support for their voices and ideas is also important and management should be open to suggestions from the floor. It is unrealistic to expect employees to be enthusiastically involved over the long term if all you offer them are top-down commands.
Focus on Principles
There are a lot of safety practices you are required to follow by law but there is still flexibility in how these are enacted in your workplace. Rather than hitting your team with a textbook worth of specific rules, come to them with some essential safety principles and work together to develop specific rules and policies from them.
Keep Safety in the Spotlight
It is not enough to simply state safety policies once and then forget them. Issues of best practice and safety at work need to be kept on the agenda. If you have a company newsletter or regular emails that are sent to staff, be sure to include an item about workplace safety. You could also try starting or ending group meetings with a short discussion of a safety issue or provide a forum in this time for employees to discuss their workplace safety ideas or concerns.
Single out and Reward Safe Practices
Be sure to keep an eye out for employees who go the extra mile with practising workplace safety or coming up with new ideas to promote it. By rewarding and celebrating these employees you can help to create a work culture that is more safety-focused.
Take Responsibility
For every workplace injury that occurs due to an employee’s mistake or inattention, there is at least one caused by improper conditions or faulty equipment. Take responsibility for management’s half of the safety equation and never try to shift the blame. This is the right thing to do and will also earn respect for management and for the safety policies in place.
Combining effective safety products and procedures with an engaged staff is an excellent first step to eliminating workplace hazards. For more information on manual handling products and procedures please visit our blog section.
