Research shows that employee perceptions of workplace safety affect safety culture and performance. What are your employees thinking about safety?
What employees think about workplace safety affects how they act on the job and how involved they become in creating and maintaining a safe work environment. If you want employee-driven safety, you have to know what employees are thinking about your work environment and safety programs.
A while back, Towers-Watson, a leading global professional services company, decided to find out. They conducted a body of research that revealed employee views about how well their companies were doing in terms of:
- Keeping workers safe
- Providing the tools and processes they need to work safely
- Involving them in safety decisions
- Addressing other related safety and health concerns
Justine O’Connor, senior research associate for the study, summed up the research findings this way:
“A lot of empirical data show that employee perception of the work environment’s safety is actually linked to strong safety outcomes. So if you pay attention to employees and fix those problems, it can help in terms of recordable rates, days away from work, and other metrics.”
Find out how to get your employees on board and behind your safety program. BLR’s upcoming webinar on employee-driven safety will get you up to speed—without leaving the building. Click here for details.
Four Categories Perception
The study found that employees’ perceptions in four categories correlate with safety excellence:
- Supervision and management. According to the research, safety performance is better in workplaces where employees feel good about the quality of management.
- Teamwork. Workplaces where employees perceive a strong sense of shared purpose and support are safer than those where working as a team is not emphasized.
- Empowerment. For the purpose of the research, empowerment was defined as the extent to which employees are involved in decision-making that affects them and whether they’re given the knowledge and the tools they need to make safe decisions. Here again, safe workplaces describe themselves as more empowered than workplaces with less impressive safety records.
- Workload. Employees who feel they have too much work and are overwhelmed tend to have more safety problems, according to the research. However, in workplaces where employees report feeling overloaded butwhere teamwork is a strong value, the negative effect on safety is less than where there’s too much work but no teamwork.
Join us on February 1 for an in-depth 90-minute interactive webinar on employee-driven safety. Our expert will tell you how to infuse your workers with your safety culture so that they become the driving force behind your program rather than its worst saboteurs. Learn More.
Get Your Road Map to Employee-Driven Safety
Employee perceptions of workplace safety aren’t the only ones that impact employee-driven safety. If management clings to the belief that it can impose safe work practices on unwilling employees, accidents and injuries will continue to occur.
The only real path to safety success is paved with employee buy-in and involvement.
Join us on February 1 for an in-depth webinar all about infusing workers with your safety culture so that they become the driving force behind your safety program.
You and your colleagues will learn:
- How to evaluate your safety culture and recognize the areas in which you can improve
- How to collect, analyze and process data into actionable goals that are the building blocks for your new safety culture
- The key steps to engaging a workforce that takes responsibility for safety on the job
- Which safety metrics need to be tracked—and why
- How to reward employees for adopting a new safety attitude, and how to sustain these cultural changes
- Tips for rewarding engaged employees without creating disincentives to report accidents and near-misses
- What you need to say to senior management to get buy-in
- How to report progress and meet critical milestones
About your Speaker:
Jon Kaufman is vice president of KL&P Motivation, located in the San Francisco area. He has designed and developed promotional and incentive programs for Fortune 1000 corporations for over 30 years. After studying under W. Edwards Deming and working with Dr. Steven Simon and others, Kaufman developed The Safety Culture Management System to provide a Web-based/consultant-driven platform for companies to recognize, report and reward employees for their proactive engagement in the safety culture. Guided by leading (rather than lagging) indicators, management uses the system to gain better insight into the health of their enterprise. Kaufman is a frequent presenter and exhibitor at safety shows throughout the country each year. Register Now.
How Do Webinars Work?
A webinar is remarkably cost-effective and convenient. You participate from your office, using a regular telephone and a computer with an Internet connection. You have no travel costs and no out-of-office time.
Plus, for one low price, you can get as many people in your office to participate as you can fit around a speakerphone and a computer screen.
Because the conference is live, you can ask the speakers questions – either on the phone or via the webinar interface.
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