During our safety days we asked the question are we terrorists or players or walking dead? The days focused on our behaviour and attitudes. The aim was simply to get us all to stop and think about how our actions and the decisions we make will affect the health and safety of ourselves and others in our work place.
The days reminded us that safety does not happen by accident and that we need to stop and think about the tasks we are under taking on a daily basis so that we put controls in place before starting work. Familiarity and routine can be the biggest dangers on site and result in us believing our workplace is far safer than it really is. We must stop and consider the impact our work has on ourselves, visitors and the public.
We have a responsibility to challenge any unsafe behaviour that we see on site. If we look the other way unsafe behaviour can quickly become the normal behaviour that we revert to or our auto pilot. Too often we think challenging unsafe behaviour is a big scary task but it can be a simple conversation between two workmates.
The day wasn’t death by power point we ran 3 workshops aimed at getting us thinking about the hazards in our work place. These looked at dust and people and plant interface. These tasks highlighted the very real dangers that we face out on site every day and the simple steps that we can take to keep everyone safe. For most of us these risks and controls were not new but the question was why do we still take risks?
Most people enjoyed getting involved in building towers a fun team building task with some very interesting results. You will be pleased to know tower building is not going to form part of our business plan moving forward. But the exercise highlighted the importance of planning a task, having the correct information before starting work and stopping to ask questions not just ploughing on blindly.
Whatever job we do with in the company the message and challenges from the sessions are the same, we need to step back and look at our work place and Think Safety First. We need to ask what can I do differently to make my work place safer?
We received a lot of feedback over all the sessions and one positive action we will be introducing to improve communications are “You said, we did” notice boards which you will see appearing throughout the business over the coming weeks.
Are we going to be a terrorist by our negative attitude and behaviours prevent the company moving forward? Are we going to be the walking dead and let change happen around us without engaging and having input to the process or are we going to be the Players who actively get involved to improve our health and safety performance?