How do you build a culture of safety?
Building a culture of safety requires the HR personnel to prioritize safety beliefs, values, and attitudes among all organizational employees. Safe workplace health and safety promotes organizational performance since a positive culture is linked to improved employee skills, knowledge, and attitudes that ensure efficient undertaking of responsibilities. Notably, when customers experience harm, employees are equally impacted negatively due to devastatingly negative feedback from the clients. Most organizations create and shape sustainable cultures necessary for advancing their efforts to ensure the safety of clients and employees. Therefore, this paper discusses the six major leadership domains that HR professionals must focus on and dedicate themselves to establish and sustain the culture of safety.
It is imperative to establish a compelling vision for safety to align the organization’s vision with its priorities. This will reinforce the organization’s foundation as regards its work since its vision will be exclusively embedded in the customers’ safety as a core value (Kaplan & Stokes, 2017). This implies HR will succinctly communicate the company’s values in terms of employees’ behaviours, decisions, and attitudes. Consequently, the organization will curtail work-related injuries and unnecessary illnesses. Therefore, the idea of “safety first” will be embedded in the everyday values and actions of all stakeholders. Notably, successful communication of such safety messages can be achieved through the organization’s work health and safety policy statements, safety posters, and regular reinforcement by interdisciplinary officers.
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Again, building a culture of safety requires HR to build trust, respect, and inclusion in the workplace. This domain ensures that the senior staffs show respect to all subordinates and demonstrates these principles throughout the organization and with clients and potential customers. By so doing, the leader will be able to build and sustain a safety culture that recognizes the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace (Shores, 2018). However, the HR must ensure that his/her actions regarding the concept of trust, respect, and inclusion are consistent throughout the organization’s lifetime and across all departments. Therefore, building trust will eliminate the “us” versus “them” perspective and ensure that all employees in the various workplace management positions in planning processes ( The State of Queensland, 2013) . This must include a clear demonstration of support to other people by supporting their judgments regarding safety and internalizing their opinions before critiquing them. Similarly, you can encourage employees to overtly raise issues regarding safety breaches to facilitate the implementation of collective responsibility to resolve the issues. Therefore, the organization will build an outstanding relationship with its employees and customers through teambuilding, which promotes a sense of belonging in the workplace.
Additionally, it is appropriate to select, develop, and engage the organization’s board to create and sustain a safety culture. Therefore, there is a need to educate the board members to inform them of the importance of the process and keeping employees and the workplace safe. This will require the board to choose specific metrics for a critical assessment of the organization’s safety, ensuring a consistent review of the culture of safety, analysing the system, and acting upon the results (Kaplan & Stokes, 2017). In this concept, the board should leverage various sources of information to obtain feedback regarding the effectiveness of culture actions and the various employee behaviours that promote safety. The feedback from culture actions and other safety-related behaviours should be used to improve personal effectiveness in developing and maintaining a positive culture of safety.
Further, the organization should make safety a priority when selecting and developing leaders during human resource development initiatives. For example, both the CEO and the board should ensure that accountability for safety is a component of the organization’s leadership development strategies. Notably, considering the heads of the various department of the organization as safety leaders will close the gap, for instance, between administrative and clinical leadership development. Therefore, the organization, through its CEO, should introduce training services for all executives down to the subordinate employees across the organization. Consequently, HR will be able to develop and maintain a positive site that promotes a culture of safety. For example, training services will foster good relationships that strengthen the bond between departmental managers and the workforce (Kaplan & Stokes, 2017). Notably, better relationships will promote a culture of good behaviours that aim at achieving safety goals as desired by the company values. Again, when seniors demonstrate positive relationships with contractors, subordinates, and other employees, there is a possibility that the team will collectively desire to work safely ( The State of Queensland, 2013) . Hence, the employees will closely involve themselves with other workers as they build trust and respect while giving the CEO the authority to maintain adherence to the safety process.
Leading and rewarding a just culture equally contributes to building a culture of safety, especially when leaders understand the guidelines and behaviours towards a just culture. This is because the leader will be consistently committed to teaching and modelling employees to reduce human errors, which are often inevitable in the workplace. This implies that departmental employees will be accountable for disregarding protocols and procedures as they report errors and possible adverse events. This should include the support for the workforce in case of occurrence of errors to help them voice errors encountered and which may threaten patient and workforce safety. Finally, establish organizational behaviour expectations, which should detail the safety-mindfulness required of all employees. For example, such expectations should include transparency, teamwork, effective communication, and timeliness in providing feedback.
References
Kaplan, G. S. & Stokes, C. D. (2017). Leading a Culture of Safety: A Blueprint for Success. The National Patient Safety Foundation. https://www.osha.gov/shpguidelines/docs/Leading_a_Culture_of_Safety-A_Blueprint_for_Success.pdf
Shores, M. (2018). Workplace Diversity and Inclusion. Reference & User Services Quarterly, volume 57, issue 4. PP. 242-247. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=4b689484-b6ca-4844-879f-e304ea7de3f7%40sessionmgr102
The State of Queensland. (2013). Understanding safety culture. Department of Justice and Attorney-general. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland. https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/82705/understanding-safety-culture.pdf
