How to ensure management board are committed to safety
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Safety practitioners know and understand (all too well, unfortunately) that management commitment is a critical piece in moving any organization forward to proactively deal with hazards and risks in the workplace.
Most times, executives are caught in the middle between ownership (e.g., boards, stakeholders, single-owner) and dealing with demands for improvement of safety programs from line personnel, supervisors, and middle management.
One reason that safety continues to struggle to make proactive changes in an organization is that the knowledge, skills, and abilities that safety professionals have endeavored to develop are underrepresented at the board of directorâs level in most organizations.
Below are ways safety professionals or practitioners get management to be committed to safety.
1. Emphasize on how safety is also their responsibility.
Most of the time in safety industries, management and board of directors often believe that safety is not one of their responsibility. In most cases, thereâs a general assumption at the board level that occupational health and safety is not their responsibility. There are a number of barriers to engaging the board membership in safety topics, which include pressure to deliver, ability to make a key decision, generating more funds or meeting more investors. All these are often the priority of the boards and management that being committed to safety is far off the responsibility they put into check. Safety professional should emphasize the need to intimate them on being committed to safety regardless of their other responsibilities.
2. Signal on the effect of not being committed to safety.
Safety management and the board of directors must learn to understand that safety began from the very top. Lower-ranked employees in the file are more likely to learn and practise what they see the management and boards of directors doing without considering the training given to them during their safety program classes or what is being taught by safety professionals. The need for the effect on lower-ranked employees must be emphasized on so as to let management and the board of directors have an idea as to why they should be committed to safety.
3. Safety needs to be a distributed function.
While most organizations often see safety as a distributed function, it is more professional to ensure that everyone understands that safety cannot be a distributed function to certain people but everyone within the organization. Safety management and boards of directors must also understand that being committed to safety starts from the boards and management, not just the safety professionals or practitioners.
4. Organizing a safety training for the board
While most safety organizations and industry focus more on ensuring their employees are well-trained in safety program to avoid related safety issues, it will also be professional enough to ensure safety management and board of directors are made to undergo safety training that emphasizes the need for them to be committed to training. Most times having the knowledge on why certain things should be done is what is really required for the management and the board to move into action of setting safety as their main priority.
Regardless of whatever happens or, however, the organization decides to fix the commitment to safety by their management or boards, the best way to approach health and safety competence is to improve it at the board level. Safety leaders can develop and implement, or outsource, executive and strategic safety leadership training to improve board competence with occupational health and safety management aspects.
