Safety should be a priority for any business. Unfortunately, many companies cut corners on employee safety, which sometimes leads to disastrous consequences. If you’re a business owner, it’s crucial to ensure that your internal culture places a premium on the well-being of everyone associated with the business. A true culture of safety starts at the top. When leadership demonstrates a visible commitment to safety, through training, communication and example, it sets the tone for everyone else to follow and take wellbeing seriously.
Luckily, there are some concrete steps you can take to create a strong safety and well-being culture in your workplace. In this piece, we’ll cover what some of these steps are and how you can implement them in your own business.
Secure an Insurance Policy
Oftentimes, businesses view insurance as a needless expense. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Doing business is unpredictable, and a lot can go wrong, so a comprehensive policy can go a long way to ensuring that the company and those associated with it are protected against unforeseen circumstances.
What’s more, protecting your company doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. For instance, if you’re based in or around Sydney, seeking cheap public liability in NSW can protect you in case an accident happens to a customer on your premises. Or, if you’re concerned about potential injuries to your employees, finding a comprehensive workers’ compensation insurance plan should be a major priority.
While preventing accidents should be the goal, their occurrences are an unfortunate reality for many businesses, especially those that require manual labour. Think of insurance as your business’s safety net. It reinforces your company’s responsibility toward staff, customers and the community. Having the right insurance policy goes a long way to protecting your business financially and ensuring that you have the resources to support those you’re responsible for when you run into unforeseen circumstances.
Create and Implement Health and Safety Rules
Building a culture where safety is prioritised starts with the rules you put in place. It’s vital to create a clear, comprehensive set of guidelines that covers all eventualities. This is especially important if your business involves plenty of physical work, which makes it more likely that your employees suffer injuries.
However, simply creating health and safety rules is not enough. Without the right implementation, the most comprehensive set of safety measures won’t do much good. Start by making sure that each member of your team is aware of your business’s safety guidelines as early as onboarding. Also, ensure that your company culture involves respect for these rules. If there are breaches, deal with them seriously to let everyone know how important your safety guidelines are.
Don’t forget to keep these policies up to date. Workplace hazards evolve as your business grows, so regular reviews and refresher training help ensure your safety standards remain relevant, practical and effective in protecting your team every day.
Take Employee Feedback Seriously
The best way to build a culture of safety and well-being is to listen to your team. Your employees are best placed to know what sorts of risks or challenges they face on a daily basis, so if they provide you with any feedback, the best course of action is to listen to it and take action to the extent possible.
It’s also important to create a culture where everyone feels like they can be heard, whether they simply want to share their thoughts or have a more serious workplace complaint. There are plenty of workplaces where individual workers don’t feel safe giving feedback to their managers, either for fear of repercussions or simply because they don’t think their ideas will be taken seriously. Regularly remind your team that they can speak to you about anything, and prove to them through concrete actions that you listen to their feedback.
It can also help to create formal channels like employee surveys and one-on-one catch-ups for the benefit of employees who don’t feel comfortable simply coming up to their managers and voicing their thoughts. By showing your team that you truly care about what they have to say, you’ll make it much easier to collectively build an environment that prioritises everyone’s wellbeing.
Don’t Forget Mental Health
Lastly, it’s important to remember that well-being extends beyond physical safety. While there’s a much broader recognition of mental health, there’s still plenty of stigma surrounding the subject, especially in fast-paced work environments.
If you’re a business that cares about its employees, you need to make mental health a priority. This means more than simply paying lip service: make it a point to take concrete actions like implementing mental health days, offering subsidised counselling/therapy and giving struggling employees time off. You can join an EAP program that connects your employees with some brief counselling sessions and takes care of all the logistics involved. More than this, it’s also vital to build a culture where everyone feels safe discussing their problems and seeking help when they need it.
All this ties back to the previous section about taking employee feedback seriously. The best way to promote mental health is to listen to your people and do all you can to address the struggles they’re currently facing. Employees can tell when a company is being genuine about its efforts to promote mental health, so make sure to implement practices that will have a concrete impact.
Key Takeaways
Looking after your team should be your number one priority if you’re a business owner. Unfortunately, employee well-being is much easier said than done. If you want to create a culture that genuinely emphasises health and safety, you first need to lay out a set of guidelines and, second, do all you can to enforce them.
In this piece, we’ve covered some concrete ways to create a strong safety and well-being culture in your workplace. Implement the tips we’ve given you in your own business to ensure that all your employees are taken care of.
