6. Respond Effectively to Employee Concerns and Suggestions

Employees should be encouraged to provide safety suggestions both verbally and through safety suggestion forms. Employees feel safer, and valued, when these issues are addressed in a timely and effective manner. From our survey, most employees believe supervisors ask for safety suggestions/concerns (73% agreement), employees offer these suggestions (81% agreement), and individuals feel comfortable raising safety concerns to supervisors and managers (84% agreement).

However, only 62% felt, “Improvements made from employee safety suggestions are communicated to all,” and just 49% reported, “Employees receive quick responses to their safety suggestions, whether they are accepted or not.” Managers should respond quickly and effectively to employees’ safety suggestions. They should also let people know when issues can’t be immediately fixed and communicate what will be done in the short-term to mitigate any hazards until full-time corrections can be accomplished. Managers should also advertise improvements when they’re made. This is good for both morale and safety-related behaviors. People feel appreciated when their issues are quickly and effectively addressed.

7. Fix Safety Management Systems

The first step in creating an ideal safety culture is ensuring safety management systems are consistent with management’s good intentions for safety. Here are some key system improvement recommendations obtained from our assessment tools and employee comments:

When safety systems are optimized, the relationships between managers and employees are healthier, employee work more safely, safety initiatives are more successful, and fewer employees get hurt or killed on the job.

8. Improve Management Communication for Safety

Managers should effectively share information about safety rules (and changes), incident analyses, close calls, safety suggestions, audits/inspections, and ongoing safety initiatives. Keeping employees informed of important safety issues not only improves employees’ safety but it helps them buy-in and feel appreciated by management.

Management often does a good job of providing this communication. In fact, 84% of workers reported, “Safety meetings are regularly conducted in my area,” and “I am comfortable raising safety concerns to my supervisor and manager.” Also, 85% agreed, “My supervisor clearly sets the expectation that employees must follow all safety rules and procedures.”

However, responses are lower for other items, including:

9. Improve Interpersonal Communication for Safety

Safety-related feedback between employees should be respectful and frequent. Ninety-three percent of survey respondents agreed, “Employees should caution each other for safety,” but only 80% reported employees actually do provide this corrective feedback for observed at-risk behaviors. While 80% is relatively strong, and improved from 68% in 2008, it is still considerably lower (93%) than people’s desire to give this corrective feedback for observed risky actions.

Similar trends are found with praise for especially safe work behaviors. Eighty percent of employees said, “Employees should acknowledge each other for especially safe behaviors,” but only 62% reported, “Employees do acknowledge each other for especially safe behaviors. Further, 95% agreed, “If a coworker saw me doing something at-risk, I would want them to say something to me.” However, only 58% said, “Other employees appreciate feedback from coworkers for at-risk behaviors.” This illustrates a miscommunication about safety-related feedback. Namely, employees want to give and receive safety feedback but aren’t convinced their coworkers do.

Management often employs behavior safety training to encourage and improve peer-to-peer safety-related communication. Employees should regularly demonstrate actively caring for coworkers through both supportive and corrective safety-related feedback.⁶ In companies where peer safety-related feedback is not the norm, employees often adopt the perspective, “it’s not my job” to give feedback or “people need to mind their own business.”

Guidelines for improving interpersonal safety-related communication include asking permission first before giving behavioral feedback, taking time to understand the context of the situation before offering suggestions, stating opinions as opinions instead of facts, asking questions to facilitate discussions, and acknowledging people’s experience and skill.⁷ Overall, safety-related feedback should be exploratory, non-directive, and empathic. As Geller points out, “When we show more empathy and compassion in our conversations, we have more impact on improving attitudes and behaviors.”⁸

10. Improve Personal and Coworker Support for Safety

Most of the issues covered in this article involve safety improvement recommendations employees have provided for management. However, employees also recognize their own attitudes and behaviors determine organizational safety. This includes following safety rules, providing safety suggestions, cautioning others when needed, reporting close calls (and minor injuries), and being open-minded to organizational safety initiatives and improvement efforts.

Employees also want coworkers to do the right things for safety. During onsite training exercises, employees often report they want coworkers to follow rules, take pride in their jobs,  maintain good housekeeping, set good examples for new employees, and take personal responsibility for safety. They’d also like to see a reduction in complaining, negativity/hostility, rushing, complacency, safety-related shortcuts and “looking the other way” when risks are noticed. In general, employees recognize their own attitudes and behaviors, and those of their coworkers, are critical to improving their safety culture. 

Conclusion

Survey comparisons over the last decade show employees believe organizational safety cultures are improving. However, many still believe further advances are needed. This article was prepared to provide safety culture improvement recommendations using employees’ feedback from our survey, interviews, and training discussions experienced by Safety Performance Solutions over a 25 year history of safety consultancy and training.

It’s smart business for managers to communicate with employees, acknowledge their experience and expertise, and make safety improvements based on their suggestions. Managers and safety professionals who apply the ten guidelines from this article should expect happier employees and improved safety performance.

REFERENCES

¹Williams, J. (2010). Keeping people safe: The human dynamics of injury prevention. Lanham, Maryland: Government Institutes.

²Ludwig, T. (2018). Dysfunctional practices that kill your safety culture. Blowing Rock, NC: Calloway Publishing.

³Conklin, T (2011). Human performance for safety leadership. Presentation at Safety Performance Solutions’ Users’ Conference. Roanoke, VA.

⁴Dekker, S. (2014). The field guide to understanding ‘human error’- 3rd edition. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

⁵Geller, E. S. (2016). Making a difference with applied behavioral science: Actively caring for people. Presentation at Safety Performance Solutions’ Users’ Conference. Roanoke, VA.

⁶Williams, J. H., & Geller, E. S. (2016). Actively Caring for Occupational Safety. In E. S. Geller (Ed.) Applied psychology: Actively caring for people (pp. 301-338). New York: Cambridge University Press.

⁷Williams, J. (2006). Improving safety communication skills: Becoming an empathic communicator. Proceedings on compact disk for the American Society of Safety Engineers Conference, Seattle, WA.

⁸Geller, E. S. (2018). The communication dynamic for occupational safety: Interacting effectively for injury prevention. Under review.