Directors’ duties: A stark reminder of what can happen when things go wrong.
Without a good health and safety culture which flows from the top down so proactive interventions by directors and those in the senior management team is key to facilitating a safe working environment.
Safety culture has been defined as consisting of shared values (what is important) and beliefs (how things work) that interact with an organisation’s structure and control systems to produce behavioural standards (the way we do things round here).
To secure and maintain a safe workplace, employers need to ensure that everyone, from senior management to individual workers, is aware of their responsibilities for safety, and acts accordingly. The four key areas for a positive health and safety culture, also
known as the ‘four Cs’, are:
Competence –
the ability for an individual or group to fulfil their role properly and safely
Control –
getting everyone to work together to achieve good safety and health performance
Co-operation –
allowing and encouraging everyone to participate in safety and health matters
Communication –
how a message is formed, presented and transmitted.
A poor safety and health culture is likely to lead to weaknesses due to problems at the person–work interface, perhaps because of these key areas. A poor culture encourages, an atmosphere where not complying with safe working practices is acceptable, and it does not help the organisation to take effective action to solve safety and health problems.
Quite often, organisations that have a poor safety culture can have the same underlying attitude to all process and procedures. This can result in poor product quality, and financial control, as well as poor safety and health.
Click on the link below to see what happens when things go WRONG
Extract from SHP Weekly Headlines
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