Tips, Tricks & Templates:

10 Ways to Increase
Your Organization’s
Safety Involvement

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may have said it best.

Environment, health and safety (EHS) programs need the meaningful participation of workers in order to be effective,
they say. But, as many safety professionals can attest, employee engagement is easier said than done.

Businesses have long accepted that strong employee engagement has a direct link to better productivity and profitability.
Likewise, EHS performance significantly improves when workers are actively engaged in a company’s safety culture and
practices. A Gallop study from a few years back observed that “work units rated in the top quartile for engagement had 70
percent fewer incidents than those in the bottom quartile.”

Engaged workers take pride in the work they do and are apt to follow best practices to achieve personal excellence. On
the flipside, disengaged workers place an additional burden on the workload of others and increase the likelihood of
workplace hazards and incidents.

How might you go about convincing and encouraging your organization’s employees to take on a more meaningful role in
establishing, operating, evaluating and improving your EHS program? These 10 tips, below, provide some answers.

1. Position health and safety as the chief values in the organization. Make sure they are demonstrated by leaders, at all

levels, in both word and deed, and everyone is held accountable. Safety as a value is best viewed as the operational

fabric of the organization, not a separate function. It’s integral to every business activity.

2. Adopt safety principles that guide employee behaviors and actions. Workers will come upon daily tasks that do

not have specific work instructions or safety procedures. In these situations, safety principles encourage genuine

involvement with concise belief statements in how they will protect themselves and guard each other, how they will

stop work when it’s viewed as hazardous and the behaviors expected in the organization. Reach out to employees for

feedback in setting your principles.

3. Analysis for improvement. Conduct an honest audit of the safety management system. Measure what is going well

and what’s not. Ask for input from all employees regardless of their position in the organization.
4. Inspect for health and safety concerns. Inspect the workplace to identify hazards and compliance issues. Watch

workers as they do work to ensure you are inspecting every area that workers contact. Utilize checklists to ensure

nothing is missed and be sure to perform frequent inspections. Include workers in the process.

5. Train and develop capability. Invest in workers to ensure they are aware of the hazards in their workplace and know

how to control them. Train workers in safety procedures and rules to properly perform their job tasks. Develop

ongoing risk-management understanding with frequent opportunities like toolbox talks, crew meetings and one-

on-one interactions.

6. Encourage reporting and investigate all accidents and incidents. All incidents, including near misses, concerns and

hazards, should be reported and investigated regardless of the severity of the outcome. The outcome is generally

not controllable, but the incident is likely preventable. Therefore, determine the causes of the incident and take

corrective actions to mitigate the chance of reoccurrence.

7. Develop positive relationships by ensuring workers have a voice in safety. Make it easy for workers to approach

management with health and safety concerns. When there is a new idea or an improvement recommendation, make

sure everyone is heard and good ideas are acted upon.

8. Think globally, act locally. Take a proactive look at what peers are doing to control their safe work environment,

build employee skills and increase desired behaviors. Since culture and management processes vary between

organizations, develop and apply plans at the level your culture can handle. Knowing your processes will tell you

when you can push it to the next level.

9. Implement a health and safety committee. Look at this as a forum for the key EHS ambassadors in the organization

to guard the health and safety processes. This team allows management teams and workers to lead in solving health

and safety problems. An effective committee can help prevent injury and illness on the job, increase EHS awareness

throughout the organization and develop strategies to make the work environment healthy and safe.

10. Celebrate wins. Acknowledging your health and safety journey gives credit where credit is due and recognizes

achievement. Give recognition to people and teams that made the difference and acknowledge the processes that

contributed to reaching the milestone. Don’t be afraid of sharing how difficult it was to achieve the goal or the

hurdles along the journey.

For over 30 years, Intelex has been making a difference in the world by helping our 1,400 customers achieve safer, more
sustainable operations. Our web and mobile solutions streamline and simplify environmental, safety, quality and risk
management, empowering organizations to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex marketplace while minimizing

www.intelex.com negative social, environmental and human impacts. Intelex is proud to be an operating company of Fortive Corporation, which
provides strength in numbers, strength in skills and perspectives and strength in our shared conviction to make an impact.

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