Following on from the first instalment in their Health & Safety Jigsaw Puzzle series, SHE Software have published part 2, using their puzzle analogy to explain how to engage all employees in working together towards the same safety goals. Engagement as a whole group is important, as indicated by a Gallup study that found that organisations rated in the top 25% for engagement had 70% fewer incidents than those in the bottom 25%. Engaged employees are more likely to be bought into the success of a business which improves their productivity and drives increased profitability. Rightly, safety becomes a priority for everyone – they want the business to succeed and do not want to see anybody get hurt.
Engagement is driven by leadership teams and safety professionals actively encouraging their teams by setting an example. In terms of where to start, SHE Software recommend the following concepts:
- Keeping it simple, stupid (KISS): If health and safety isn’t easy to participate with, then people won’t do it. Remove manual, antiquated, paper-based processes for managing health and safety to make it easy for employees to be involved and fully participate.
- Closing the Feedback Loop: How often has an employee submitted feedback or a hazard, but not heard anything back? Typically any input goes into a health and safety black hole. To keep employees actively engaged, it is important to close that feedback loop. Every single employee deserves access to participate, report and consume safety information.
- Providing Organisation-Wide Visibility: The same way we want to share safety performance reporting with leaders, we need to share similar data with employees. By providing that visibility, the entire organisation can see the difference they are making in helping improve health and safety performance.
- Performing Inspections: Employees want to arrive safely to work every day and, more importantly, leave work in the same manner. This is why organisations have a duty of care in ensuring that inspections are regularly taking place and completed on time.
All of the above can be achieved by utilising health and safety technology that is easily accessible to your whole team. It is also important to remember to come back to the jigsaw puzzle analogy – Strong health and safety leadership must be in place first in order to drive meaningful engagement from your team.
You can read part 2 in SHE Software’s series in full here, and follow the SHE Software blog to catch the rest of the series.
