Posted By Mark Eastbourne
Hi

Hope the wording is correct in the title, not sure whether I should have used the word Marketing.

But the questions I want to ask are; How do you promote Health and Safety within your workplace? How do you measure the effectiveness of what you do? What tools do you use to promote health and safety in general or specifically? How can you prove to an outside body that you are being successful?

I am sitting here charged with promoting health and safety, upper management wish to promote a "health and safety culture" - I can't stand that phrase I must confess, I personally believe that good safe practices should be inherent within all the activities of the workplace, there should not just be a safety culture, but, I am new here so guess I shall just have to start at the basics.

So far I have added a range of safety hints to go out at the bottom of my internal/external emails, currently the subject is working at heights. I have introduced a coloured laminated bi-monthly A3 H&S Poster with facts, figures, accident stats and myths, which the staff must read if they are to find the answers to 3 H&S questions which they receive with their wage slips if they wish to win a £10 record/book token.

Are there anythings you do differenty which I may be able to use!?

But these are general superficial light hearted safety promotional techniques, realistically, I see a lot of investment in training for the staff to get anywhere near a "H&S Culture".

Anyway, I digressed and had a moan, forgive me, any further ideas of how to promote health and safety witin the workplace!? I promie I won't call them superficial!

Mark

Posted By Kenneth Patrick
Mark, don't be too reactive to the idea of a safety culture. Read this extract from the CSB report on BP:

"10.1.1 Reporting Culture
An informed culture must first be a reporting culture where personnel are willing to inform managers about errors, incidents, near-misses, and other safety concerns. The key issue is not if the organization has established a reporting mechanism, but rather if the safety information is actually reported . Reporting errors and near-misses requires an atmosphere of trust, where personnel are encouraged
to come forward and organizations promptly respond in a meaningful way . This atmosphere of trust requires a “just culture” where those who report are protected and punishment is reserved for reckless non-compliance or other egregious behavior . While an atmosphere conducive to reporting can be challenging to establish, it is easy to destroy

Posted By garyh
Consider the adage "Safety is a value".

I everyone believes this, starting at the top, then your culture will follow.

Easy to say, very difficult to do.