This column appeared in the Summer 2023 edition of Workplace Issues magazine.
As the year draws to a close, it is a good time to reflect on the achievements of your business. Maybe you successfully hired new workers who have become valuable team members. Maybe you won an important new client or helped your existing customers and stakeholders to everyone’s satisfaction. Perhaps you increased sales or orders, met important deadlines, or expanded into new premises.
These are important milestones and successes worth celebrating and building on in 2024.
So what about your work health and safety achievements? What goals have you achieved, what plans have you brought to fruition and embedded into your workplace? What have your workers accomplished in the safety arena that deserves recognition?
In the Summer 2023 magazine, you’ll read about the winners of the WorkSafe Awards. These are workplaces and individuals who are leading the way in work health and safety, wellbeing, and injury management. The Awards recognise the people and the workplace initiatives and solutions that help achieve a safer and healthier work environment.
You may not have entered the Awards, but I encourage you to celebrate the safety successes, and the people behind them, in your workplace.
As a leader in your workplace, you can play a significant role in changing attitudes and shaping behaviours. Recognising your safety milestones and the individuals or teams who drove them is one way of doing this. It’s a real demonstration that you are committed to the safety and wellbeing of your workers.
It’s a very exciting way of building a positive workplace culture where everybody is committed to being safe, and where everybody sees themselves as part of a winning team.
Promoting your safety progress though staff updates, team meetings and even a morning tea or barbecue can help you sustain real momentum within your workplace. Make sure your achievement isn’t a ‘tick and flick’ exercise, a policy or procedure that is launched after months of consultation and collaboration, only to curl up and fade on a noticeboard. Make sure any change, initiative or solution you introduced continues to work for you.
And don’t rest on your laurels. Why not find out how you can share your safety improvements and initiatives with others. This can be especially valuable if you are a larger business with the resources to mentor and support smaller businesses in your community.
If you have established safety resources (such as sample policies, forms for doing job safety analysis or other pre-job checks), share them with your contractors, especially if they are a small business. This helping hand ensures improved safety standards and outcomes for everyone. Who knows: the safety wins you celebrate today with a cuppa in the tearoom may one day by heralded on a grander scale amongst your peers, from the spot lit stage of the WorkSafe Awards. I look forward to seeing you there.