Of all the qualities a business can be designed to operate in line with, responsibility is absolutely at the top of the list. It’s essential to note that a company is not only the life pursuit of an entrepreneur or partnership hoping to develop a revenue-generating empire but also a very real organization that impacts the lives of those around them.
As we’ve seen from corporate scandals over the years, a lack of responsibility is not only a matter of fraud but can put people in harm’s way. The truth is that a lack of responsibility isn’t only found in the master plan of those willing to utilize criminal behavior for short-term gains, but also a matter of improper planning and incompetence.
It’s important to note that only consider safety issues as potentially causing injuries that can be recovered from and paid for through insurance. Any wrongful death attorney will tell you that a misallocation of resources and ignoring a duty of care can, quite rightly, send people to prison.
Yet we don’t have to use such dramatic language to put the point across – a responsible firm should always place safety as one of its most celebrated and necessary priorities. In this post, then, we’ll discuss exactly how you might progress:
- Implement Clear Safety Policies
Everything you do within your firm emanates from your policies. They will determine how your risk assessments are to be carried out, your approach to staff safety training, how you comply with any laws and regulations that govern your field of operation, emergency response planning, and more.
These policies should be written under legal scrutiny to make sure instructions, terms, and principles are precise and clear to understand at all levels of the organization. These documents should be easily accessible, available in printed form in each office or in a shared cloud drive that cannot be altered but can be accessed by anyone in the organization.
Policies should also operate on the macro level, such as a general outline of your priorities regarding safety, and more specific, precise, and utterly grounded preparations – such as exactly how and when to evacuate to a given area in the event of a fire, after breaking the fire alarm to warn the entire building. Without policies, you have no essential standard to refer back to. Of course, policies can be changed over time where necessary. However, it’s good to make sure they’re stringent and account for almost any eventuality or identified risk that must either be eliminated or mitigated correctly.
- Regular Safety Training
Staff training is so important to get right. Many staff members find staff training to be a fun day from the usual rigors of their usual routine, but they might not look to it with the sense of real attention and composure that we’d hope.
That’s why it’s essential to emphasize just how important safety training is for their wellbeing. Outlining the work hazards they deal with, fostering an essential sense of accountability, and making certain you outline your goals for zero workplace injuries (this might not “sound reasonable, but no other goal is worth aiming for), will help bring people to your side.
The scope of safety training will depend on the work being undertaken. For warehouse loaders, it will include how to properly track inventory, how to ensure heavy machinery is being operated correctly, and how to report issues using the correct protocols. For managers, it might mean how to provide the correct level of oversight to those in their care, and why it’s so important to inspect safety equipment before it’s given out to the team each morning.
- Integrate Accountability
Ultimately, the buck has to stop somewhere, and that’s certainly the case where lives and well-being are at stake. This doesn’t mean you have to be punitive over every little infraction, but it does mean taking obligations absolutely seriously and rooting out bad habits from the jump.
For example, if staff members have been improperly storing safety equipment overnight (potentially leading to damage), then it’s essential to make sure those with the last verified access to the safety room are brought into the office and appropriately reprimanded. Disciplinary punishment could lead to dismissal for grave derelictions of essential duty, while warnings and staff rotations can be addressed when necessary too.
The main purpose of accountability is for staff to know that if they do willingly fail in their duties, your company will notice, and they will be appropriately punished for it to prevent that from happening again. If someone is innocent or if they’ve been victimized by an issue, then likewise, your company will identify and address the fault, protect you from the restorative process, and help you push forward towards recovery.
- Creating A Culture Of Safety
Within companies where egregious safety errors have occurred, it’s almost always human error that plays some part. That’s not to say terrible and unforeseeable accidents never happen, because they do, but in the overwhelming number of cases, this is not expected.
From nuclear reactor meltdowns to inner-kitchen disasters, some subversion of the safety processes, reports that have gone unanswered, and those looking to cut corners are almost always present. This is why it’s so important to integrate a culture of safety where staff are rewarded and encouraged to speak up about issues they’ve noticed.
This is partly why your accountability process needs to be properly measured because you can’t have staff looking over their shoulder worried about making a mistake at every second – that’s how mistakes happen, too. A culture of safety means having more than one person sign off on safety standards each day (like checking all refrigerators are at the correct temperature before a restaurant closes for the night), and developing a reliable, well-used reporting and communications system is essential.
- Safety Equipment Is An Essential Expense
It’s very easy to think that safety equipment is a one-time purchase with replacements where appropriate, but for the most part, this equipment should be a spending priority, with no expense spared.
For example, if a light tear in a protective suit or pair of industrial gloves is noted, that shouldn’t be “repaired,” it should be replaced. If a cyclist falls and sustains a nasty knock to their helmet, they need to replace the helmet, because its protective integrity has taken a hard knock.
For this reason, safety equipment should be regularly inspected and rotated out or replaced when necessary. That might include replacing aprons, gloves, goggles, ear defenders when needed, construction hard hats, steel-toe-capped boots, shoes with rubberized grips (like for working in kitchens), and more.
- The Importance Of Wellbeing
It’s also important to note that caring for the health and wellbeing of your staff is not necessarily about direct safety equipment, but making safety improvements to the equipment they use. You could furnish your office with basic office chairs that were cheap to buy and must be replaced, or you could opt for those that support their natural posture and lumbar positioning, improving their general well-being and bodily health over time.
Too few firms link the importance of staff safety and wellbeing – they are not disparate disciplines or priorities! Furthermore, staff safety and wellbeing are directly tied to staff productivity, satisfaction, and lowered turnover. There’s nothing worse for morale than feeling exposed to danger or difficulty in the workplace. As such, safety planning is as much a proactive measure as it is a preventative one.
- Scaling Correctly
It would be a mistake to think that all safety issues come down to the right equipment, policy, or accountability measures. Those are certainly the most important and overarching duties to get right, but they’re not the end of the conversation.
For example, scaling a business correctly is part of improving its safety planning. If you expand too quickly, you may find yourself understaffed. If staff are overworked, tired, unable to fulfill all duties assigned to them, struggling to keep up to date with the latest processes, or perhaps not properly accredited for responsibilities, then that can be a huge problem as well.
It’s important to take a cautious approach towards scaling and integrating new systems, especially if you work in productive sectors like the manufacturing industry. It’s not just the workers that adopt and live out your safety standards, but the managers responsible for them, the systems that guide them through your operations, and the ability to be agile to new and better standards. In an overstuffed or overwrought organization that has failed to sustain itself appropriately, these issues can go from small mistakes to massive problems – and massive problems are always a poor omen for safety planning.
With this advice, you will be able to integrate not only safety priorities but also the mechanisms that keep those standards well-integrated and cared for. Of course, this is not just humble business advice, but an essential practice every business should opt for. While a company sustaining itself across the years or closing after an authentic attempt at success, any enterprise that prevents injuries and harm is one that can be appreciated.
