Just as your corporate culture includes and affects all employees – from top management to the front line workers – so does a safety culture.
A safety culture can only develop when everyone in the company embraces safety as a key component in their everyday work.
There are two basic elements to creating and sustaining a safety culture: Leadership and Employee Engagement. Our previous post concentrated on the importance of safety leadership so let’s look at the second one now:
Employee engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.
“This is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential.” – David Macleod.
Engaged organisations have strong and authentic values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two way promises and commitments – between employers and staff – are understood and fulfilled.
Although improved performance and productivity is at the heart of engagement, it cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach which tries to extract discretionary effort by manipulating employees’ commitment and emotions.
Employees see through such attempts very quickly; they lead instead to cynicism and disillusionment. By contrast, engaged employees freely and willingly give discretionary effort, not as an ‘add on’, but as an integral part of their daily activity at work.
An engaged employee experiences a blend of job satisfaction, organisational commitment, job involvement and feelings of empowerment.
These four enablers of engagement have proved to help organisations.
Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where it’s come from and where it’s going.
Engaging managers who focus their people and give them scope, treat their people as individuals and coach and stretch their people.
There is employee voice throughout the organisations, for reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally, employees are seen as central to the solution.
There is organisational integrity– the values on the wall are reflected in day to day behaviours. There is no ‘say –do’ gap.
Employee engagement does not mean employee happiness.
Someone might be happy at work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are working hard, productively on behalf of the organisation.
Employee engagement doesn’t mean employee satisfaction.
A satisfied employee might show up for her daily 9-to-5 without complaint. But that same “satisfied” employee might not go the extra effort on her own,
Definition: Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organisation and its goals.
This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don’t work just for a wage packet, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organisation’s goals.
We believe all employees, regardless of seniority, are the solution to health and safety concerns, not the problem.
You can only influence change through emotion, not logic.
Some Testimonials from 3 of our recent clients
‘Our organisation engaged with SOG as part of our ongoing behavioural safety/cultural journey. The ‘Deal With It’ workshops were very well received across our employee and resident contractor population, encouraging self-awareness and understanding the impact of our personal behaviours – they were interactive, relative to our workplace and workforce, and well-remembered by everyone.’ HSE Manager, British Sugar UK
‘The ongoing development of a positive, pro-active EHS culture is of paramount importance to our organisation. We wanted to introduce an awareness programme that would both engage and empower our people and also provide them with the skills necessary to help our EHS culture continue to grow. The solution provided by SOG, including the ‘Deal With It’ course, was exactly what we were looking for and has proven to be very effective.’ HSE Manager Teva, UK
‘The SOG Ltd trainers were thoroughly engaging. They broke through the walls of some of our more tentative and sceptical employees. Each showed great care for our facility and it’s workers. Many of our employees left the ‘Deal With It’ sessions remarking that it was the best, most effective and certainly the most fun safety training they have ever experienced. Why didn’t we do it sooner? Oregon- thanks you’ EHS Manager, Meggitt, Oregon, US
Speak to our Training Consultants T: 01928 515977 for further information.
