An organisation's culture with regards to safety can be equally as important as its safety management system in keeping people safe and healthy.
Safety culture is a combination of the individual and group values, attitudes and behaviours that influence how health and safety is managed within an organisation, and how effectively processes and procedures are implemented. Safety culture should influence, and be influenced by, the overall values and ethos of the organisation.
Negative or poor cultural factors are likely to have a detrimental effect on the organisation's ability to maintain safe practice and prevent the occurrence of incidents and/or accidents. A poor culture may encourage non-compliance with procedures, and quite often poor practice can also be reflected in other areas of work beyond health and safety.
Conversely, strong practice can support employees to follow and actively promote the organisation's ability to maintain safe practice and prevent the occurrence of incidents and/or part time workers to quickly adopt and implement the organisation’s procedures.
The culture, attitudes and behaviours demonstrated by managers and senior leaders within an organisation are shown to be critical in influencing the behaviour and application of workers. The combination of commitment and action of leaders, along with their decisions, set the benchmarks and expectations for safety throughout the organisation.
The active involvement of senior managers in the safety management system and the compliance with processes is very important to encourage higher levels of motivation throughout the organisation to promote health and safety agendas.
Perceptions of the level of management commitment will be influenced by factors such as:
WINNS are continuing to build a workplace culture that promotes the importance of health, safety and security in its workplace. WINNS leads by example and encourages safe working practices across its sites and head office. Our working relations have strengthened by taking a proactive stance on health and safety, and staff see WINNS as a caring and reliable employer.
WINNS has made its Health and Safety Policy available to all staff as a reference document as it supplies guidance and best practices to all staff.
WINNS policy contains:
Health and safety policies, along with all other business policies, are reviewed annually as a minimum.
The Country loses millions of workdays every year because of work-related illnesses, injuries and accidents. The Health and Safety Executive reports that work-related illness affected 1.7 million workers in 2021.
WINNS observes that Health and Safety are important to its growth, and the consequences of not fully complying with our own Health and Safety Policy.
Affected employees could face:
And WINNS could face:
(Summary of statistics for Great Britain 2021 can be found @ https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh2021.pdf)
WINNS provides advice on Health and Safety in the workplace to all its clients and staff members.
Focusing on employee Health, Safety and welfare at work will lead to a positive effect on business productivity and workforce morale.