When it comes to strong health and safety performance, your people play a significant role.
After all, even with physical controls in place, accidents can still occur if negative perceptions of health and safety lead to cutting corners, resistance to new procedures, and risk-taking behaviour.
The key is to develop a good understanding of your health and safety culture so that you can identify what needs to be done to raise standards across your organisation. But how?
Improve your employees attitude and perception to workplace health and safety
How does it work?
Our innovative Health & Safety Climate Survey is an online tool specifically designed by our team of qualified Health & Safety Consultants to uncover employees’ attitudes and perceptions to workplace health and safety. Utilising a simple Likert scale, the survey presents respondents with a series of carefully-designed statements and invites them to indicate how much they agree or disagree; their responses are then quantified to provide an objective measure of your health and safety culture in relation to seven key areas:
Management commitment
Employee involvement
Communication
Training and information
Motivation
Compliance with procedures
Learning organisation
Helping you to bring about positive change
With employees at the forefront of health and safety on a daily basis, the survey also incorporates a free text field to capture more detailed views on particular issues, or suggestions for improvement.
The survey is anonymous, thereby encouraging truthful responses and uncovering issues that you may be unaware exist.
Demographic data can be gathered, enabling you to draw a distinction between job role, age category, location and other insightful information that will allow you to target specific problem areas.
What sort of things will it give me insight into?
The responses to our Health & Safety Climate Survey will provide you with an overview of your organisation’s safety culture in the form of a written report that will include a summary of the key findings and recommended actions arising in each field, together with data tables, bar charts and graphs plus free text suggestions for improvement categorised into specific areas.
We will also position you on the Safety Maturity Scale, offering suggestions as to how you can progress toward the ultimate goal of becoming a generative organisation with an inherent commitment to health and safety.
What happens next?
Your consultant will discuss the report with you so that you have a clear understanding of what is working well, as well as areas for potential improvement. They can draw on the data gathered in the Health & Safety Climate Survey to:
- Design interventions to develop staff competence
- Develop procedures
- Provide training
- Facilitate workshops
- Support leaders and managers to develop a comprehensive behavioural change programme
Health & Safety Climate Survey FAQs
Why is a positive health and safety culture important?
Creating a positive safety culture, where everyone actively participates in health and safety, will enable you to meet your duty of care and provide a working environment that protects your employees from harm. But it’s not just about lowering accident rates – a positive safety culture is proven to deliver improved productivity through a workforce that is motivated and committed.
What’s the difference between health and safety culture and health and safety climate?
The prevailing health and safety culture within an organisation – the way in which it approaches and manages health and safety issues – has a major impact on the health and safety-related behaviour of people at work. In fact, the Health and Safety Executive emphasises that developing a positive health and safety culture is essential if high standards of health and safety are to be achieved and maintained.
A health and safety climate, which is what our survey aims to assess, is defined as “the sum of employees’ shared perceptions of policies, procedures and practices relating to safety. A Health & Safety Climate Survey will examine how people perceive and describe the importance given to safety issues by the organisation at a particular point in time, and how local arrangements are seen to reflect this.
Can EW’s Health & Safety Climate Survey be tailored to my specific needs?
Absolutely. The seven areas described above are recognised as providing a good overview of the safety culture within an organisation; however, we can also focus on any specific areas you may wish to examine by creating bespoke statement sets and applying the same tool.
Attitudes and perceptions to risk
Risk-taking behaviour and some contributory influences
Adherence to rules and the propensity for violations
The influence of leaders, managers, supervisors and peers
The adequacy and understanding of rules and procedures
The provision and use of work equipment
Occupational health risk control measures
Accident and incident investigation
This is not an exhaustive list and we will be happy to discuss your particular needs and formulate a survey that helps you to better understand the root cause(s) of your health and safety concerns.
Operations Manager, RMIG Limited