How do you get your employees involved in hazard identification?

Involving employees in hazard identification is crucial for creating a safer workplace But, involving employees in hazard identification not only enhances safety but also fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility for workplace safety among your workforce.

I often work with team members when a hazard is identified and work through the reporting process with them. I re-educate through toolbox talks when I can and engage team members who actively report hazards as soon as I receive them and encourage their input through out the process.

We have to find a way to personalize it for them. Words bounce off the ears and mind, unless they can see and feel the worth of hazard recognition to their lives and lifestyle.

Employee involved in hazard analysis are more likely to identify unsafe acts and conditions.There is one technique KYT. This technique is useful in identifying hazards.

Is no doubt that hazard identification and mitigating them helps to keep workplace safe. To encourage employees to be part of it, requires top management participation, establishment of safety rangers across the organisation to enforce safety standards and having a kind of reward system to recognise those reporting and documenting hazards identified.

The need for training is well founded, the best way to deliver this to the teams on the shop Floor is through standardised work, that document that clearly details step by step with the associated risk assessment that can and will deliver consistency of training, interaction with machinery, plant and equipment and goes in many ways to look at human factors and how we avoid the events of high hazard activities that can lead to events and loss. Training is the bed rock of any operations along with standards and procedures, but they must be of a quality of detail to ensure mistakes/errors of interactions can be eliminated. Regular reviews, updates and retraining will also help embellish the knowledge of the team, driving consistency.

My experience, the single greatest danger is working out of process. No worker can work within process unless they know the process completely. Training — including why specific tasks and considerations are important — is the single greatest way to protect workers. Effective training isn’t as simple as showing the worker how to do something (assuming that the other controls have been implemented). Training should be professionally designed by people trained to do so. And remember if you can’t find time to do it right when will you find the time to do it over?

Training. It can be the longest hour of their life or, the most enjoyable time of their life. As the trainer, you dictate how your employees will feel after attending the training. To hold the most memorable training and increase the likelihood of the employees retaining the information, you need to mix up your training style. Make sure to utilize the four methods of adult learning (visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic) throughout your training to ensure most of the employees get what they want out of the training. We need to move beyond the WIIFM (what's in it for me). The best way to have memorable training is to get the employees involved. Do some research on icebreakers or different methods to deliver the content.

Randy, Spot on!! In my 25+ years as a practitioner, I found that follow through is critical to maintaining positive employee engagement. Even if the answer is one that employee don’t particularly want to hear, they deserve to hear it.

First of all, the average, Safety Professional has no business mucking about in culture. There are people who have studied organizational psychology, organizational development, and organizational efficiency that are far more qualified to deal with a corporate culture. That having been said it is important to build trust. Building trust begins with keeping your word so if someone provides you with feedback, you should act on it. Establish a feedback loop where in your circle back to the employee who gave you feedback, and provide information as to what you did with the information provided to you.

If you are going to ask for feedback from your employees, you had better do something with the feedback. If you solicit your workforce for hazards or risks, and do nothing with that information, then the next time you ask, you more than likely not get many results. The employees know if you are just providing lip service or if your actions equal your words "Talk the talk and walk the walk." Like I've said in the past, employees get frustrated when management fails to follow-up or follow-through. Once they see you are actually doing something with their feedback, the more likely you'll get more feedback in the future.

Be careful what you reward. I don’t know how but somehow pizza has become a currency. The workers see this is juvenile and pointless. Also, you can’t reward people for the absence of some thing. For example, you can’t reward people for not getting sick. Similarly, you can’t reward people for not getting injured rewarding people for not getting injured presupposes that people get injured intentionally. There’s too many cute programs they’re completely in a factual, but the soft headed mouth, breathing Safety Professionals or worse yet their bosses like the idea. It’s also important to remember that not everyone enjoys the same type of reward and recognition.

Years ago I wrote an article for Entrepreneur magazine, entitled “You Get What You Put Up With”. This article explored the phenomena of KPI’s, and the danger of measuring for the sake of measuring. If you do not understand the connection between your measurements, you will fail. for example, some companies measure participation in safety meetings. But unless you specifically define what constitutes “participation“ you could have everything from someone showing up and sitting staring off into space, or somebody who is leading good discussions about making the workplace safer are treated the same. There isn’t enough space here for me to expound on the other dangers of measuring the wrong things or misinterpreting your measurements.

Tell them imagine one of your family members was in this situation, what would you do to help them? Make it personal and it works 100% of the time.