What are your company’s safety values?

If you ask a group of shop supervisors about their workplace’s No. 1 safety lesson, you are likely to get highly varied responses. Some will point to working with machine guarding and proper PPE use, while others will mention ergonomics, repetitive motion, or air quality.

Because so many aspects of work in a manufacturing facility are affected by safety, having it be a part of your company’s core beliefs and culture is imperative. Also, when a safety culture is working effectively, it simply becomes one of the company’s values.

This is why it’s important to know which members of the leadership group can have the most effect on safety.

In A Supervisor’s Guide to (Safety) Leadership: Preventing Injury in the Workplace, behavioural safety expert Judy Agnew writes that frontline supervisors play the most critical role in workplace safety. The book, a good read for all manufacturing leaders, also highlights practical tools for improving safety and educating management.

Agnew identifies nine safety leadership practices, including the obvious like eliminating hazards, and the novel, such as encouraging near-miss reporting, as ways to show that the business has safety values, rather than just safety rules.

Creating a safe work environment is an ongoing process, just the same as lean methods and continuous improvement practices. However, being proactive and going above and beyond what the regulations demand creates not only a safe workplace, but a safety culture. It’s this culture that will incubate the values.

To start, share your safety vision with every employee. Everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to understanding the safety values of the company. This includes the company’s stance on workplace impairment caused by drugs and alcohol and also its stance on bullying and mental wellness.

Safety responsibilities should be defined for each team within your organization – including office and warehouse staff -- to ensure that each worker knows the role they play in everyone’s safety. Enforcing accountability in this area will hold everyone to the same set of standards, and as Agnew points out, it is especially important for frontline supervisors.

When everyone is involved it builds trust in the safety practices and in the overall safety culture. This trust is what changes a company that has a safety culture into one with safety values.