One of the most important elements of occupational health and safety management is shaping an appropriate safety culture.
Creating a culture of occupational safety has a direct impact on employee attitudes regarding safety and health protection.
Shaping a safety culture is a continuous and multidimensional process that should be addressed to all groups of employees in the organization. This process is as much about transferring appropriate theoretical knowledge as it is about putting it into everyday use. Employees will act in accordance with accepted standards when these patterns are an understandable, obvious and unquestionable way of behaving for them.
Systemic actions
In order to shape safe, desired employee behavior, the employer should use systemic activities:
- Technical – technical activities include the use of safe machines and devices, safe technologies, marking of dangerous places and zones, active security measures operating despite the employee’s inattention, ergonomics of workstations
- Educational – activities consist in improving the professional qualifications of management staff and employees, developing a system for training employees in the field of occupational health and safety, informing employees about threats, conducting an occupational risk assessment, developing and applying instructions
- Organizational – focusing on safety issues, involvement of management and employees, creating patterns of behavior, sense of personal responsibility for safety matters, free and open communication, monitoring employee behavior
- Legal – this means fulfilling obligations specified by law, as well as executing orders, speeches, decisions and orders issued by bodies supervising working conditions. Legal activities also include awareness of disciplinary and material liability among employees.