Safety Training and Employee Engagement
Health and Safety at work isn’t just a legal obligation. It’s also a duty of care for your employees, to ensure that their working day is as comfortable and secure for them as possible. You begin your business day hoping every employee comes into work feeling healthy and happy. It’s up to you to keep them that way, and send them home at the end of the day feeling physically and mentally fit.
Training
One way to do this is to train them thoroughly in safety practices and procedures. In normal circumstances, every employee will have gone through health and safety training as an integral part of their induction process. However, to keep up to date with changes in technology and safety legislation, you should also provide regular refresher training. This means that you’ll always be in compliance with the law, and that your staff and business practices will be at their most effective.
It’s likely that many people in your organisation believe that they’re on top of all the important elements of Health and Safety. However, recent years have changed our working environment considerably, and these new developments have to be taken into account. COVID-19 has underscored the necessity for strict hygiene, the importance of PPE and safe distancing, for example. It’s also shone a light on mental health awareness, which applies both to on-site and home workers.
It’s also been recognised that worker alertness diminishes over time, which can lead to carelessness. Routines can become so ingrained that people perform tasks by rote, without paying due care and attention to the hazards of their environment. Regular updates, and refresher training on fire regulations and evacuation procedures, are important, as are first aid training and emergency response behaviour.
Worker engagement
You can provide your workers with whatever training you consider appropriate, as long as it’s effective: your employees should understand how to perform their tasks safely, and why. Improving your worker engagement can help increase your productivity and your business competitiveness.
Employee engagement is a measure of how enthusiastic, loyal, and connected an employee feels to their job and their organisation. A worker who feels they’re appreciated as a valued team member will be more likely to take ownership of their own safety. When workers feel valued they become team players, and the whole organisation benefits.
Safety culture
Promoting a safety culture in your workplace will help your employees to prioritise safe working practices naturally. They’ll be less likely to consider these practices an obstacle to performing their job correctly and in a timely manner.
Safety culture demands a visible commitment at all levels of the organisation. This can include:
Demonstrating good leadership
Communicating your company values
Showing appreciation for work that’s done both safely and well
Investigating safety incidents immediately and thoroughly
It’s also good practice to find ways to get your workers involved and encourage them to speak up. People whose opinions are listened to feel more valued and committed, and this will contribute further to your organisation’s safety culture.
If you’d like some advice on employee training, we’re happy to offer you assistance with many aspects of workplace safety.