28 April marks the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO)
World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2022.
ILO’s theme for the day is acting together to create a positive health and safety culture.
Here, we explore the importance of embedding a positive health and safety culture within organisations and the benefits it can bring.
Safety Culture is defined as the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management. It is how health and safety is viewed within an organisation as well as the overall commitment from every employee to the health and safety management system in place.
Safety culture is the foundation of the success of health and safety within a business, for it is the commitment and participation in safety systems that make them truly successful. The responsibility to uphold and drive this culture has become an integral part of safety functions.
A positive safety culture is vital when implementing, maintaining and improving an organisation’s health and safety management system. To exist in a negative safety culture can create social, psychological and physical issues and deteriorate employee wellbeing and health. If safety is fundamentally perceived within an organisation as insignificant then the commitment to that end will be low.
This can have serious negative effects including but not limited to:
A positive safety culture requires personal investment from every individual within the organisation. A pro-active approach to health and safety must be taken to create an environment where social dialogue and participation in the development, compliance and continuous improvement of safety systems are encouraged. Working with transparency and involvement in your organisation’s safety vision increases the participation from employees.
Health and safety is the responsibility of every individual within Nomad Digital and every day we see the commitment from our people in their activities.
Our recent milestone achieved; 1-million-work hours without a lost time injury represents a positive health and safety culture within our organisation. It is the mutual trust and communication between all our employees such as the reporting through our global safety observation system that allows us to realise such a tremendous achievement. Our employee’s commitment to our safety systems, risk assessments, policies and procedures are to be truly commended.
However, safety is an ongoing challenge and a continuous process to evolve and build upon. Whether it is our site facing employees complying to our Point Of Work Safety Assessment (POWSA), or our employees empowering themselves with the knowledge and information from our global training system, it is critical we strive to always put safety at the forefront in all we do.
We all have the right to go home safe every day and I believe this is a message which truly resonates with our people across all of our operations. We will continue to place safety at the centre of all we do, build upon our system and embrace our safety culture to ensure all operations are planned and executed safely.
