Tuesday, November 27, 2018

How To Conduct Comprehensive Safety Culture Assessments

By William Cole


Keeping working and living environments safe requires constant evaluation. It is recommended that you conduct safety culture assessments on regular basis with the aim of improving on existing measures and averting catastrophes in future. There are steps that will make your assessment thorough and beneficial as provided by experts.

A review of policies, documents and programs will tell you how safe an environment is. Keeping a complex like institution, industrial set up or residential area safe is a matter of deliberate planning. These plans can be seen in policies and programs set up by the proprietors. You will also use the blueprints to assess whether the intended measures were taken to keep the places safe. Documents will indicate the capacity of the institution to guarantee safety and steps that have already been taken.

Engage with management and employees before you conduct the assessment tours. Initial engagement is meant to introduce these employees to your idea and buy them in. Inform them of your assessment and expectations from them. This interaction should also explain your goals and the fact that you are not looking for faults. They should be informed that the trip is about making their working environment safer for them and the property involved. If they can see the benefits they will enjoy, you will get maximum cooperation.

The best time to conduct assessment is when a factory or office is in full operation. In case you are assessing a residential area, ensure that almost everyone is home. This gives you a perfect time to assess what could happen in real time. You can also judge how people conduct their activities without simulation. Where operations are scaled down like machines being switched off or some people being away, the level of danger may be underrated or response overrated.

The leadership of the organization should be involved. Though they are not in every corner of the complex, they provide the resources and directions required to keep work places and other complexes safe. Discuss about meeting regulations set for the industry, policies of the company and your findings on the ground. Even the recommendations made will depend on their initiative to keep the place safe. They need to know that the assessment is meant to protect their premises from damage and people from injuries.

Develop a personalized survey. Each work or living environment faces unique challenges. Even when working in the same sector, the people involved, space and overall environment will differ. This means that a generic survey will not add any value to your assessment. You need a checklist that is specific to your needs and with categories that fit your firm at the moment.

Group and individual interviews will give you a broader report. Measuring culture is complex because you have to consider such metrics as realities in workplace, perceptions, incidences that happened in the past and people involved, among other elements. Discuss how safety is communicated, successes and failures in the past, effectiveness of measures taken and past incidences, among other issues. Groups create a sense of shared responsibility.

The report you produce should provide room for both rapid and sustained improvements. Beyond the current environment, you must consider the surrounding since the responsibility is shared. It is not about blaming people and adding expenses. Greater focus should be on keeping everyone and everything within the premises safe.




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