Health and Safety is a business fundamental that needs to be appreciated by all organizations. However, often we find that it is those organizations whose main business involves obvious risks like handling of flammables, mining ,heavy machinery and the like, that are more keen on instilling a Health and Safety culture. More often than not, organizations whose business activities are limited to office work do not pay much attention to this important issue, yet they also face substantial risks and would equally derive immense benefits on leveraging on the subject to improve on business performance. Besides, organizations need to realize that implementing Health and Safety requirements at the workplace is not an option but indeed a legal requirement entrenched in law though various pieces of legislation and municipal by-laws of many counties.
Health and Safety is a strategic business enabler that allows organizations to leverage on a ‘People Soft Subject’, to improve performance by creating competencies in four key areas, which are internal business process management, People mobilization, Risk management and Stakeholder relations management. Excelling in these things makes good business sense.
However, several assumptions have been drawn about safety in the workplace that make most organizations shy away from establishing Health and Safety programs, the first being that implementing Health and Safety protocols is a cost. This premise will only be true to those who operate from the notion that Health and Safety is a cost centre and never a revenue centre. Like many other strategic business enablers, Health and Safety makes businesses return more profits at the end of the day and moreover, acting responsibly is the license for any business to operate in the first place.
Another assumption that exists presently is that ‘ugly incidents will not happen to us, perhaps they only happen somewhere else ’. This notion is engendered by a reactive mentality, which looks at Health and Safety performance from a lagging indicators perspective. The fundamental thing for business managers to understand is that the absence of incidents is not in itself proof of good Health and Safety performance. There is an easy way to deal with this question, and that is to find out how much risk exposure exists in the operations or in the business at large. Management has to constantly ask: ‘How much do we accept that people should work under unmanaged risks?’ It is sobering to always consider that if people are made to work in risky environments, without effective safeguards, even when no one has got injured, everyone is hurt by the exposure and the workplace is still unsafe and unhealthy. The organization Heath and Safety performance, in such circumstances, can only be rated as poor.
There are some motivators or incentives that management should put in place to ensure that workers are not only well educated and conscious about their Health and Safety but also practice what they have learnt. As we all know, the ‘Carrot and Stick’ has been used a lot in Health and Safety. New thinking around this subject has brought about the view that this approach is not effective. What business managers and supervisors need to know is that there are countless means of creating motivators and incentivizing positive action in the workplace. The common ingredient in all of them is that they must provide workers with an increased sense of status, promote the feeling of relatedness and fairness while creating an aura of autonomy. Management actions must be Predictable, call it Consequence Management, in order to engender a sense of certainty. Anything, be it an incentive scheme, a promotional program, or a day to day shop floor engagement approach, that has these ingredients is likely to generate the right buzz about Health and Safety in the workplace.
Developing a culture in itself is challenged by many things and more so if it has to do with Health and Safety. Lack of good sponsorship of any Health and Safety by the TOP management would compromise the ability of an organization to develop a Health and Safety culture. We must be able to get people to understand that ‘this is the way we do things around here’ and as long as this is not coming from the top, the Health and Safety message could get lost. The other important issue is that of communication. Health and Safety requires frequent and consistent communication. Vertical and Horizontal communication in both directions is essential. When it comes to top-down communication, people must interact with the messages constantly, otherwise the meaning, momentum and focus could get lost. The golden, loop-sided, rule of effective engagement is that supervisors must repeat themselves for the message to be imbibed, while the shop floor must speak once and be heard. Lastly, the failure of businesses to embed Health and Safety requirements in every operation and activity and ensuring that this is an integral part of how things happen explain the seasonality of many organizations in addressing Health and Safety issues and is a big killer of Health and Safety culture. These are some of the challenges faced when trying to instill Health and Safety within corporate culture.
Perhaps, one may wish to know my advice. ’Begin the journey now, benchmark with the best and engage the services of a good Health and Safety Coach’ to ensure Health and Safety is instilled within the corporate culture for your organization.
By Matthew Munyao, Health and Safety Expert
