Safety First, Learning Always: Why Continuous Learning Is A Must For Workplace Health And Safety

Louise Woodburne, CEO of KBC Risk Solutions, Health and Safety Division of KBC

Fostering a safety-first attitude in the workplace requires a commitment to continuous learning, and by fostering a culture of continuous learning, organizations can proactively address safety risks. By using emerging technologies and trends, companies can provide their employees with training and knowledge retention strategies to effectively manage security issues and maintain a safe work environment. To successfully change employee behavior and shape their safety mindset, organizations need to take a top-down approach. This ensures that the management team is like-minded and committed to promoting a culture of safety. This requires continuous learning at all levels, which becomes much easier when companies partner with an experienced and reliable OHS provider.

Ending Conflict: Safety and Production

Ongoing training is important to ensure employees form a lasting habit of understanding their duties and responsibilities to ensure job security. With repeated practice, working safely becomes a habit. Given human nature, if security becomes the norm, it is easier to create a secure production environment than one where security conflicts with production. Organizations that invest in facilitating the continued growth of their workforce through continuous learning accelerate their business' ability to dynamically change and anticipate and seize opportunities. Security creates a competitive advantage allowing companies to move forward with confidence, knowing that their risks have been minimized.

Digitization of continuous learning functions

Technology can be used to increase worker awareness of risks in the work environment while speeding up communication between teams. The technology also provides security in previously difficult-to-reach environments with remote working capabilities. Consider the Virtual Safety Officer (VSO), which allows teams to access advisory services without needing someone on site. Technology is also taking lifelong learning beyond the classroom by expanding the learning environment through digital formats. For example, online training and virtual assessments with the facilitator to access workplace risk advice and safety update services by scanning a QR code.

Reinforce learning to retain knowledge

The most important thing for businesses is security. This shouldn't be an afterthought. If management and workers do not understand safety, instead of prioritizing safe production, their workplace becomes a conflict zone between production and safety. It is therefore essential for any business that involves health and safety risks to regularly remind people of the risks in the workplace and to ensure that everyone returns to their loved ones at the end of each day. For this message to be effective, we need to use different strategies and consider different learning styles when providing initial information and following up on updates. By bringing the message of safety to everyone's attention, at all times, we can make safety an integral part of that work culture.

A global vision of security

By focusing on improving manager skills, a company can ensure that its managers understand the importance of safety and become a social component of the company. When people learn, they grow. While there is room for error in the continuous learning cycle, mistakes should be turned into lessons and used for growth and improvement.

Adapt to the importance of security

Communication, collaboration and feedback at all levels are non-negotiable in a continuous learning environment. We also need to increase security awareness with less emphasis on relevance and collaboration. Rather than having a production checklist and a safety checklist, it's more effective to find ways to combine the two so they're part of the same culture. Ensuring adequacy is always essential – there is no need to endlessly document industry or industry-specific rules for the risks involved. This requires a dedicated approach to documentation, including appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) with appropriate training in the correct processes, as this is the only way to ensure that safety measures are relevant to people within the company.

Use Security

A positive safety culture is essential. It cannot be overstated that a company that has a culture of safety first is a company with fewer accidents and accidents because people are more aware of the risks they face every day. Changing people's perception of risk is very beneficial and an experienced occupational health and safety service provider can make the difference in achieving this change through an appropriate and personalized safety training program. The more people are willing to take risks, the more adaptable they are to change. Adaptability is the key to innovation and productivity, enabling increased profitability through safety.

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