If you want to meet your environmental social governance standards while ensuring the safety and wellbeing of your employees, simply introducing policies and strategies in line with industry standards is not enough.
Achieving health and safety goals within the workplace is impossible without employee engagement, so you require a collaborative effort to ensure compliance.
Here are five sure ways to ensure that your employees understand and comply with health and safety regulations.
1. Create clear and feasible policies
An excellent way to garner the interest of your employees is to ensure that your safety policies honestly reflect the nature and challenges of the job.
For example, how well do you understand the job requirements of different departments? How clearly can you communicate safety protocols that can reduce risks of injury or hazards?
Policymakers should request input from employees from each part of the organization. This is a good way to ensure that the policies resonate well with the employees and address visible issues. Also, pay attention to phrasing and terminology to avoid the chances of being misunderstood.
2. Ensure that safety programs are easily accessible
Accessibility is another key factor that can affect compliance with occupational health and safety directives. Are employees aware of where these policies can be found, and can they be accessed from their smartphones and tablets or only through a company-designated computer?
Are there excessive security measures hindering access? It also pays to consider the best formats in which the information is provided. Reference documents are the most common medium, but you can also provide safety guidelines through video presentations.
3. Provide regular and updated training programs
Employees cannot adhere to safety guidelines if they do not fully understand what is required of them. Training programs are usually designed to encourage employee participation and demonstrate how best to replicate the procedures included in the training manuals.
Bear in mind that practical application is a more efficient way to retain information. With each improvement to established guidelines or new equipment or safety risk, organize programs to retrain employees and refresh their memories.
4. Give positive reinforcement
Showing appreciation and reminding your employees that they are making a difference can go a long way in improving employee satisfaction. This in no way means that harmful practices or mishaps, no matter how slight, should be ignored.
Rather than sharply criticizing an erring employee, a softer, kinder approach to criticism would be more effective. Such practices would help create a supportive environment within the organization. This, in turn, will encourage increased employee participation.
5. Emphasize employees’ responsibility
As stated earlier, effective health and safety practices result from a collaborative effort between employers and employees. It is important to remind employees that they have a responsibility to ensure their safety and that of their co-workers.
Create channels for feedback so employees can provide helpful suggestions on changes or improvements. These observations are critical data for reassessing and updating safety programs.
It will also show that your organization genuinely listens to the concerns of its employees, and they, in turn, will feel more committed to compliance if they play a more active role.
