Ahead of this weekend’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work, we asked Sarah Moore, our Head of Safety, Environment, Quality and Energy to share some of her thoughts on building a safety culture
In a function specific career that has spanned more than two decades, Sarah has seen a huge shift in both the perception of safety and its leadership. At the start of the century, organisational health and safety was still largely typified as being run by grey men with clipboards. The average employee in any organisation large enough to have it, likely saw it as box ticking, and probably something that could be held against them. At higher levels in a company, it was also often seen as a cost centre imposed upon them by the government. There was no love for health and safety and the fear of change it conjured.
In more recent times, the function has begun to be perceived as one that adds value to a business. So, what changed? Sarah’s view is that the biggest change has been a shift in leadership. In the illustration above, everyone from directors to employees felt imposed upon. In a vacuum of leadership or ownership, safety had taken on a negative connotation.
In contrast, when leaders appreciate the commercial benefits of being people-focused, safety becomes a value centre. It may not generate quantifiable revenue, but it does save on the cost of things like workers’ injuries and/or illness, staff turnover, low productivity through lack of engagement and equipment downtime. Thus, health and safety improve the bottom line.
“Safety still has to be personal, even on a commercial level. My job is to protect the business from risk and to keep people safe. Keeping people safe is personal and I think a good safety culture has that reality. It needs to be led from the top down and the leadership must also make space for it to come from the bottom up. The removal of the clipboard has been game changing.
Great safety leadership means people are starting to want to do things differently, rather than feeling that they have to, and that will automatically bring the numbers of incidents down. Getting buy in leads to proactivity and that makes all the difference.”
Schemes such as Conrad Energy’s You Talk, We Listen empower employees to share any areas of concern or suggestions for improvements. The raised steps that were designed and manufactured last year to help engineers to safely attend to gas engines are a perfect example of this.
Conrad Energy has embraced the leadership model Sarah describes, and we look forward to seeing what’s next with her leading our approach to safety going forward.
