Creating a Culture of Compliance: Tops Tips for Encouraging Your Workers to Follow OSHA Rules

Any forward-thinking and diligent employer will know that keeping their workers safe through a culture of compliance, is beneficial to everyone and will ultimately prove to be a beneficial strategy.

Providing OSHA training on an ongoing basis will help to keep your business operation running smoothly and minimize the prospect of a safety incident occurring.

Here is a look at some of the ways that you can encourage your workers to follow OSHA rules and maintain that all-important culture of compliance.

More haste, less speed

Most businesses now operate in an extremely competitive environment where costs have to be kept to a minimum and deadlines are often extremely tight, which is where a case of mixed messages regarding safety but speed can invade the production-line mindset.

The old saying of more haste and less speed could be relevant in this scenario. What you are trying to encourage is a situation where workers are asked to get their work done as quickly and efficiently as possible, but if this means straying outside of specific safety guideline, a rethink will be called for rather than take any unnecessary risks.

Great communication

It can be emphasized enough that great communication skills are at the very heart of a successful culture of safety compliance.

Hold regular safety briefings and encourage open dialogue where workers are able to make suggestions or observations regarding current safety procedures and where potential improvements might be made.

It has been proven on so many occasions that if workers feel that they are being given the opportunity to provide their input on safety procedures and consider that they are being listened to, they are far much more likely to embrace the culture of safety compliance that you are trying to enforce.

Lead by example

When it comes to safety, your leadership skills definitely matter.

The workplace situation that you want to avoid at all possible costs, is where the majority of workers feel that the there are different sets of rules relating to safety, depending on your level of seniority.
You cannot possibly expect to instill a viable culture of safety compliance if senior management and supervisors are not seen to follow the same rules and demonstrate the same level of respect for safety that they are demanding from the people working underneath them.

Protecting your business as well as your workers

Safety is a serious issue and when you consider the litigious environment that we now live in, as well as averting a potential accident through good safety procedures, you will want to protect your business from the prospect of a lawsuit, by creating a robust set of safety standards based on OSHA regulations.

Monthly or quarterly safety meetings should be convened and the topics of discussion and any recommendations should be recorded diligently. Reviewing these suggestions and discussing any recorded accidents should also be on the agenda, as this will help to raise awareness and prevent a future incident.

It will also provide you with some comprehensive documentation to refer to if someone suffers an accident in the workplace, despite having been shown how to follow a specific set of safety guidelines.

It can often be a good move to employ the services of a third-party safety assessor, who can get workers up to speed on relevant OSHA regulations, in addition to reviewing your current procedures and providing suggestions regarding improvements that need to be implemented.

Hearing protection

A good example of where employers can find themselves vulnerable is when they fail to enforce certain policies, such as hearing protection.

It is sadly not an uncommon site to see someone who does not always spend their time on a noisy production floor, failing to adhere to the hearing safety rules by not wearing the appropriate hearing protection.

A good way of protecting your business as well as your employees, is to regularly measure noise exposure levels and ensure that it manages to remain below 85 dba, which is the OSHA suggested limit.

Although there are a number of production areas that probably don’t require any level of hearing protection, if you have places within your facility where it is a must, it is critical that you ensure compliance with hearing safety procedures, every time they enter a designated area that requires the use of ear defenders.

These are just a few examples of why and where safety compliance should be a big priority, and you should not need reminding that OSHA rules are there for a good reason.

Ryan Harper is a safety compliance officer, a role he has been in for several years. He writes on the topic for business blogs around the web.