Abed Hamid is a senior engineer at Worcester biomanufacturer AbbVie. Reach him at abjhamid@gmail.com.
Updated: January 11, 2021
10 things
10 Things I know about ... A solid safety culture
By Abed Hamid
10) Safety begins on day one. Develop a safety orientation program for all new and transferred employees covering key safety topics such as accident reporting, proper lifting techniques, and ergonomics.
9) Training. Educating your workforce about the importance of safety helps to protect them and to establish and maintain a safe workplace by increasing their knowledge and awareness of safety issues. Ongoing training and education will help maintain that culture of safety.
8) Enforcement of safety rules. You implemented a safety program addressing safety concerns and regulations. Ensure its success by enforcing it. Be sure to conduct workplace safety walks to identify possible safety hazards and resolve them.
7) Positive reinforcement. Disciplinary reinforcement on its own is not enough. Take it to the next level by identifying and reinforcing good safety behavior when observed. An example can be a workplace celebrating x amount of days with no incidents.
6) Proactive safety. Fixing safety concerns before an incident occurs should always be the goal. Establish a near-miss/safety observation reporting program, regularly follow up with near-miss reports.
5) Reactive safety. Every workplace aims for zero incidents. Unfortunately, sometimes incidents do occur. Ensure your readiness to respond to incidents by having a robust incident investigation process, root cause determination, and effective corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence.
4) Engagement from the workforce. Safety improvements start and end with the front line workers. Having a workforce engaged and committed to safety is one of the best ways to improve your safety performance. Find ways to empower your workforce to identify and eliminate safety concerns.
3) Communication of safety goals. It’s important for the safety goals to be communicated in a consistent manner. You want to strike a balance between repetitive and consistent messaging while avoiding desensitization.
2) Redeployment of resources. Safety is everyone’s job; we should help each other reach the overall safety goal. That means being nimble enough to shift resources and attention to areas demonstrating safety challenges, creating a mindset of: “We’re in this together.”
1) Tracking and metrics. All stakeholders should know where the company stands relative to safety records. This requires tracking and reporting out incidents/injuries and communicating them into digestible and understandable format.
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