Most organizations have a safety policy in place. They have binders and training sessions and signatures acknowledging the receipt of information. What they fail to recognize is that a true safety culture safeguards everyone so that a team member can do their job without worrying whether someone will come to their rescue in a dire situation.
The problem? Not everyone is in the same building anymore. Not everyone has a supervisor nearby. Thus, this is where safety programs begin to fail.
The Problem Area of Standard Safety Policy and Training
Walk into an office and you’ll see safety procedures posted on the walls, designated fire escape routes, and first aid stations. That’s in the office setting. Now, what about the field technician alone at a client’s office? The property manager visiting a vacant apartment building late at night? The social worker who visits clients in their homes after hours? These situations aren’t covered by standard safety policy and procedures (and they don’t exist in remote work situations) but they are increasingly common across nearly all industries. Remote work isn’t just people working from home anymore, it’s people working without a team; maintenance technicians, health care providers, delivery persons and more are spending their days without anyone else working beside them.
Unfortunately, safety training assumes that there will be someone else around. It teaches how to get out of a situation as a group, who to call once everyone has arrived in a safe area or remains in danger. But what happens when you’re the only person in that room?
Acknowledging Who’s At Risk
To create a culture that safeguards everyone, you need to acknowledge who is truly at risk for your organization – for too often, risks are easy to identify, especially in construction sites and manufacturing floors but isolation itself is a risk factor that isn’t consistently realized.
If someone has a medical emergency. If someone is about to be assaulted by an angry customer. If someone slips and falls and hits their head, what’s going to happen next? If there’s someone else there, they may get help immediately to stabilize the situation. For these workers, there is no safety net – unless you’ve crafted one.
Intelligent organizations know this and have incorporated lone worker safety devices that provide monitoring capabilities and emergency response when another team member isn’t there to meet the need. This means check ins, panic buttons, location tracking and other measures that get help when they need it regardless of where they’re working.
The Technology Required for a Safety Culture
But it’s not just about the technology – it’s not enough to give someone technology and call it a safety culture. The technology matters – real time location tracking for proactive intervention, for example; automatic alerts that notify security or HR someone’s missed their check-in; panic button access that gets help immediately dispatched – but that’s not the whole picture.
The best integration comes when companies treat the devices like any other business necessity – and take the time to train people, test it periodically, engage honestly about what’s successful or not – and foster an understanding that it doesn’t mean one cannot safely complete their job; it means they’re being smart about it.
Everyone Taking Responsibility
One thing that’s consistently seen in organizations with strong safety cultures is that it’s not just handed down from management; safety is everyone’s responsibility. It might sound too good to be true but getting there practically is feasible.
By including workers in any safety planning efforts, you’ll ascertain what risks they truly face instead of someone sitting in a conference room guessing. When you ask workers in the field what’s making them uncomfortable or what could make them feel more comfortable, you’ll get responses you can actually work with.
It’s critical too that when people raise their voices, you make accommodations or at least respond. There’s nothing worse than silencing someone who brings concerns to your attention about culture or policies – a check-in system that’s too complex; a panic button placement that’s too awkward – they’re not complaints; they’re valuable input about a system that needs to work correctly or risk compromising their life.
Communication Gaps That Exist
Where safety culture fails even more often is with communication opportunities – not just formal ones but informal ones. Yes, there needs to be incident reports and emergency procedures but without daily connections about how things are going safely – avoiding near-misses instead of only reporting them once they’ve happened – people might assume everything’s fine until it’s not.
Safety briefings are beneficial but they’re better as conversational instead of lecture. Stories about why something bad almost happened (but didn’t) are useful (without blame); celebrating times when a system did work reinforces those policies and systems actually mean something.
Specifically for lone workers, however, this means integration through consistent communications – additional calls/texts just to touch base instead of check off – and one can reasonably be assumed one would feel more connected when others are aware of their position and vested interest in their safety than if no one knew otherwise.
What’s Important to Measure
Finally, organizations measure lagging indicators – the accidents that already occurred or incidents that have been reported – and while that’s necessary information to know, it doesn’t paint the culture in a positive light. Leading indicators are more realistic – how often are the safety devices being used positively, are people comfortable reporting near misses, do employees believe they can refuse unsafe work without losing their job?
Exit interviews reveal safety culture issues far too often when employees leave an organization without noting them while present. If they’re leaving because they felt unsafe after obtaining no feedback from supervision about their concerns or belief ownership actually would care – this information is paramount – even if it comes too late.
A Safety Culture is Never Over
Creating a safety culture isn’t a finite project with an end date; it’s a continuous development that requires constant attention even when things seem to be going smoothly – and even more so when things seem fine because that’s when complacency takes hold.
This means reviewing policies as operations change as technology advances as you learn from what works or fails over time; the field technician’s needs today will likely differ five years down the road and if you don’t remain flexible to change along the way, your processes are out of date before they’ve begun.
Companies that get this right don’t see safety as compliance or legal red tape; they see it as a natural part of how their business conducts themselves. Every team member should be able to go to work knowing if something goes wrong, someone would know; and help would come. It’s not complicated in theory, but implementing reality requires honest investment with the correct systems behind them.
