HEALTH & SAFETY
BUILDING TRUST AND WORKING TOGETHER
The Safety Forum delivered four priorities for safety improvement:
CONCLUSION
• Improve communication and worker involvement.
• Simplify near miss reporting by evolving this into safety observations.
• Use technology to improve feedback and communication with the workforce e.g. email, text messaging.
• Provide better explanations for specific rules and regulations.
These priorities come from a process that has genuinely involved all workers. The Forum created an open environment where everyone was mixed up at the tables. Managers, supervisors, operatives, directors and office staff sat together to discuss these questions. This process cut across hierarchical barriers, and enabled people to trust and learn from one another.
David continues: “many of our guys have worked with us for a long time but still this event helped to banish some assumptions people had about one another and developed understanding. I think the most important message the day gave was that in this organisation we respect everyone’s views as valuable. In my mind that is key to being transparent. I want our sites to be places where people can challenge one another no matter who they are.
“We also discovered that although we tell people what they should and shouldn’t do, we don’t explain why that’s the case. People told us that if they understood why a rule was in place, then they would be more likely to comply with it. So that is one of the priorities that we’re going to take forward – better explanation. As far as worker involvement is concerned, a point was made that site operatives should be involved in writing site RAMS [Risk Assessment & Methods Statements]. This is also something we will take forward.”
As the directors at Global Construction demonstrate, effective safety leadership involves a process of building trust, where communication and understanding are improved across individuals and groups of people, irrespective of position.
It was equally important to create a culture in which people can listen to one another, respond positively to feedback and learn from their mistakes. The ability to speak up irrespective of who is being spoken to, or doing the speaking, was also important, and this required the development of a more open, transparent communication structure.
Since the Forum sessions, Global Construction has taken several steps to put these principles in practice, ensuring a process of continuous, lasting improvement and a new safety culture that permeates across the entire organisation.
David Macdonald comments: “As a leadership team, clear communication and transparency across the organisation continues to be a priority. We’ve taken action on the specific issues raised at the Forum in June and we send out a monthly bulletin keeping people informed about what’s happening.
“We also have a monthly safety forum where Neil [Health & Safety Manager] and I will visit each of our sites so that workers have the opportunity to give us feedback, ask questions or raise concerns. So we’ve increased our visibility considerably.
“We’ve just laid 400m of water mains through
the centre of Inverness where the information we had about existing pipe-work was unreliable. The fact that we’ve managed to navigate that territory without incident shows the level of our competence and care – particularly the way we’re communicating with contractors. But of course we can never be complacent.
“The industry is always evolving and we must continue to work hard to reinforce the right culture. We want this Forum to be a regular event where we bring the workforce together and challenge everyone to share ideas to improve safety practice. These events need to be interactive, engaging and innovative, offering something different each time to make people sit up and take notice.”
AUTHOR BACKGROUND
Esther Walker, Co-founder and Director of Forum Interactive.
Dr Esther Walker is a social scientist, facilitator and gestalt therapist. She specialises in the influence of work culture on the way individuals think and behave and the interventions which support safe and healthy work practices.
Forum Interactive
www.foruminteractive.co.uk
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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