The importance of a establishing, growing, and maintaining a true safety culture in the workplace is a topic that has garnered valuable insight. Knowing that establishing a culture is far more comprehensive than just setting up a program, consider the costs of workplace injury: $1,100/per employee, $39,000 for a medically consulted injury and then death of a worker is $1,150,000.
With these staggering figures, how can you create a safety culture on a small budget?
Establish Priorities
As with any budget, establish your baseline priorities. Addressing a safety culture means to start small, but requires a commitment to maintaining and growing your safety culture. Culture translates to shared values, leadership, accountability, continuous learning, and support.
Commit To One Of These Five Areas In A Safety Culture
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Shared Values: How do you spread timely and mission critical information your team members? How do you do this when you have a remote workforce or employees who work at different times/different places? How do you start your new employees on the right foot with safety onboarding?
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Leadership: Is everyone “on board”, from the owners to the C-suite all the way through to your front line managers and supervisors? Is everyone sharing the same message? Does everyone walk the talk?
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Accountability: How do you know that your team has made the commitment to safety? How can you be sure that safe practices are adopted? How can you check?
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Continuous Learning: What types of processes or systems do you have in place that promotes and supports constant learning? Is your learning aimed towards your workforce and the type of learners that you have on your team?
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Support: What is the nature of support that you give your team? Do they have the knowledge, tools and time to address safety?
Consider Your Options
There are many alternatives available to you. Take time and think about not only your concerns today, but think about how you want to maintain and grow your safety culture. This may mean consideration of not only cost, but time to implement and ease of use and growth potential.
Start Small and Stay Committed
Establishing a safety culture is paramount for your company. It translates to making a commitment protecting your team and keeping them coming back healthy day after day. This means starting small and progressing through to repeatable successes.
It’s Worth Every Dime
How much are you willing to spend to avoid $1,100/employee? Addressing your safety culture on a small budget is easier than you think. Simply pick one of the five areas above and focus on it for one month. After 30 days evaluate how it went, adjust, and pick a new area of focus. Before you know it you will be rocking your safety culture, saving money on injury, and enjoying the benefits of a happy healthy team.
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