You cannot overemphasize the role of safe, committed leadership when it comes to worker health protection. Safety management systems require constant vigilance and a strong push towards compliance in order to stay effective, for behavioral and situational reasons both.
Individual behavior is very much defined by the circumstances where it is observed, so a worker’s reaction to a given safety plan or unfamiliar protocols will always depend on how those are presented. When management creates a plan for workers on site to follow, those workers will not be able to follow it well if the management does not provide good instructions, thorough reasoning for the new protocol, and help along the way for workers adjusting to new requirements.
If management does not communicate new training plans well, those plans cannot be followed completely. It is company leadership’s responsibility to make sure that all new equipment, planning and regulations are explained fully so that workers can experience their full benefits.
A friendly push towards safety is often necessary, but this is not as crucial as the act of providing safety training in the first place. If management does not care enough about the well-being of their workers to give safeguards against hazards, they are actively harming those employees.
As EHS Magazine wrote,
“When Juan Cerezo fatally fell from a 14th floor façade in Manhattan in September 2015, the Department of Buildings opened an investigation into the availability of a safety harness or other fall protection at the jobsite and whether there was a mandate for workers like Cerezo to use them.
When a retaining wall collapsed that same month at a jobsite in Brooklyn, burying Fernando Vanegas under cinder blocks and killing him, the tragedy occured after a series of safety complaints to the Department of Buildings, including workers abating asbestos without protective masks or suits.
If a worker is in the position where their only protection is behavior, management already has failed that worker on a number of fronts.”
The best way to make sure that management is providing the best possible atmosphere for workers is through safety software. Using comprehensive safety modules allows leaders within the company to track training, compliance, and injury records for trends and then analyze those trends to establish a better plan moving forwards.
