Make safe working a culture
When you get into your car, you automatically fasten your seat belt. You don't think about that. And once you forget it, it immediately feels strange. Your car and partner remind you of that seat belt, and you'll soon be safely behind the wheel again.
That pattern is interesting because it has an important basis: culture. Culture is everything that is produced by society (as opposed to nature). In this context, it is also described as the atmosphere and traditions or customs of a particular community.
In this case, the motorist community has thus developed a habit of putting on seat belts. Drivers do this because they agree that it is safer. That consensus was not established, accepted and lived through within a few weeks. This has taken decades and many different campaigns, fines and developments.
Safety, health and environment (VCA) in your company
You can also translate this metaphor into safety in your company. A construction helmet and steel noses are really good ideas for a construction site. If you are going to unload from your trailer with a crane, it is useful to know that you have to stamp. How do you get your employees to embrace safe work and behave accordingly? That won't work if you just hang a note with safety rules on the message board. That really takes a bit more. A culture of safe working must be carefully and consistently developed over a long period of time.
Why is a safe working culture important?
It's worth investing in a culture of safe working. A strong safety culture helps reduce risks and prevents accidents and injuries. A safe work environment makes employees feel comfortable, which improves their productivity and morale. The more accidents you can prevent, the better. Because accidents can lead to expensive claims, costly repairs and reputational damage. Speaking of reputation, companies with a strong safety culture are more likely to attract customers, partners and talent who value safety. So count your profits.
How do you create a culture of safe working?
You can't build a safe working culture overnight. With consistency, leadership, and engagement, you can lay the foundation for a work environment where everyone works safely and with confidence. The question, of course, is what you have to do for that.
First of all, it is wise to safety, health and environment (VCA) to put it on the strategic agenda. This means that you name safety as a core value in your company's vision, mission and goals. Integrate safety into policy documents and processes in your company. This way, you ensure that it does not become an isolated topic. Is that done? Then include the topic of safety in the regular discussions with and presentations to your colleagues to discuss the topic.
You can then show leadership by setting a good example yourself. You do this by obliging yourself and your management to consistently follow and promote safety rules. Show visible commitment, for example by attending safety rounds or training sessions yourself.
Involve employees and train and inform them continuously. Ask your employees to help you think about how safety can be improved in your company. Employees often have a very concrete picture of safety because they know their own practice best. Organize regular safety training courses, both for new employees and existing teams.
An important aspect is also to ensure an open reporting culture. Make sure your employees don't feel hampered from reporting unsafe situations, near misses, and incidents. You can organize this by ensuring anonymity, but especially by approaching reports positively. When incidents or near incidents are reported, reports must also always be followed up and fed back so that employees see that their input is being taken seriously.
Finally, it is essential to carry out regular audits and inspections to verify compliance with safety rules. Evaluate incidents and use insights to adjust processes and behaviors.
The help of your digital KMS/QMS is essential
One digital quality management system (KMS/QMS) is essential for embedding safety in your company culture. In the ISO2 HANDLE platform offers a lot of functionality that helps you work on safety.
Information sharing
You want to document information related to safety properly so that it has a fixed and discoverable place. This is where the most recent information is always available. This is important when you start sharing that information with your employees. In your ISO2HANDLE platform, you will find extensive options for document management and sharing with colleagues. Detailed version control takes place on each document. You can also design standard processes in ISO2HANDLE and easily share them with colleagues from your platform. To these processes, you can add links to specific documents (e.g. safety manuals), other processes, or registration forms. That is the strength of a digital system.
Stimulate notifications
In ISO2HANDLE, your colleagues can easily make notifications via their computer or smart phone. Reports, for example, of incidents, near misses, anomalies, areas for improvement and non-conformities. You can set up these notifications smartly so that they are forwarded directly to the right therapist. If a therapist does not pick up an alert, you can have automatic notifications follow. In your notifications overview, you can immediately see if notifications stay too long. As a quality manager, you can then choose to intervene manually. In your dashboard, you'll see a status overview of all your notifications and you can click through to each individual alert for more information.
People are training
Training is also part of increasing safety awareness and essential skills. In your ISO2HANDLE platform, you can easily set up the course offerings per employee and automatically invite the employee to attend a training that is scheduled. If your colleague does not complete that training on time, he or she will receive automatic notifications. And here, too, you can intervene manually if it takes too long for your colleague to pick up a training.
Inspections are ongoing
From time to time, you want to make an inventory of whether the safety rules are being followed through an inspection. With the smart forms in ISO2HANDLE, literally register everything that is important in terms of security in your company via your tablet or smart phone. And by everything, we also mean everything. This is because you can set up the system yourself without any technical knowledge in such a way that it is exactly tailored to your company.
Visualizing safety
Of course, you also want to have a visual picture of how safety is doing in your company. Are all meters still green? Your ISO2HANDLE dashboards provide an integral view of safety. You can also easily share them with your management and colleagues, which is a great way to provide feedback and encourage your colleagues to do just that little bit better next month.
The ISO2HANDLE VCA toolbox is full of tools that help you put safety on the agenda and between the ears of your management and colleagues. Do you want to know more about how our platform can help improve your quality and securityto achieve ambitions? Then ask for a short online demo from 30 to 40 minutes on. This is completely optional and provides you with great new insights.
