Posts Tagged ‘health and safety training’
Ergonomics is hardly a new term but it’s one which is often met with scepticism by employers.
The concept makes sense; eliminate work related factors which are exacerbating an employee’s illness to reduce their time off work, but the equipment offered can put employers off. How much difference can a mouse with squidgy sides or a chair with three extra levers really make?
Well the answer is just under £50,000 for an office of 170 employees, so not a small amount. By not taking the time to invest in proper ergonomics you’re not just affecting the health of your staff, you’re throwing away nearly £50,000.
The Health and Safety Executive have undertaken a comprehensive report which investigates the costs and savings of installing proper ergonomics in various workplaces, including a newspaper office which employs 170 staff members. Most employers within the department assessed carried out tasks such as copy-taking which involve repetitive typing at a keyboard for long periods of time.
It means that many of the employees are tied to their workstations for prolonged amounts of time and therefore spend the majority of their day in one position carrying out the same kinds of movements over and over again.
Many of us have to ‘prove’ that our way’s best. This could be a salesperson convincing a customer to buy from them; an interviewee persuading an employer to choose her; a team influencing the Board to invest in their initiative instead of the alternatives.
And it can be tempting to ‘prove’ your worth by discussing the intricate details of how you will do the job. But this just proves what you’ll do, not that it’ll work. It’s like someone saying “here’s my 5-step process for getting a date on a Friday night” and then going into lots of detail about each one. But when you ask “does it always work?” they reply “no, never”.
So, to prove your approach works, use one/more of:
- Case studies: tell a story of when you’ve done something similar before. Start your description with the results you caused, not the work you did, since that’s the thing they’re most interested in
- Testimonials/references: obtain written/verbal endorsements from credible people you’ve delivered similar results for. Again, start with the results and work backwards
- Talk about something that shows you have new insights to help them deliver exceptional results (a good test: you want the other person to think “well I had never thought it about that”)
- List all the initiatives/companies/customers you’ve delivered similar results with
- Give the total results you’ve caused i.e. add them all up
Once they know that you deliver results, you’ve earned the right to discuss your process. After all, if someone said “I can help you find love on a Friday night. My approach has a 100% track record; and here are three case studies, two testimonials and a reference”, your response will be “Sounds great. How do you do that?”
Action Point – Identify when you next have to ‘prove’ your way is best. Then choose one/some of the above to show you will definitely deliver results (this is very different to explaining the steps you’ll be taking).
Azea Limited – Behavioural Safety Specialists. www.azea.co.uk Safety is a mindset.
To find out more about the range or workplace safety culture and behavioural safety training programmes we offer, visit our website here. You can also email: info@azea.co.uk or call 01665 714 000. To receive regular updates from Azea, subscribe to our blog here.
We have also launched our 2013 ‘Safety Bubble’ campaign. To find out more about the campaign, click here.
Selling Safe-T is part of the reason you will reduce accident rates in your workplace long term.
We have taken a ground breaking approach to enhancing human behaviours which is consistently reducing accident rates by improving cultures and attitudes, in a very rapid time frame.
(3 month package, split into 5 workshops within a week delivered to over 400 employees).
As part of our ‘Selling Safe-T’ project, our client commissioned us to design and deliver a project that would enable employees to think like a team and challenge unsafe acts or requests.
For more information, email Azea Limited on info@azea.co.uk or call 01665 714 000
Azea will enable you to create long term safety bubbles that protect people, plant, buildings and the environment. Our expertise makes it simple to keep your employees and the public safe while you go about your business. The Azea (Aiming for Zero Employee Accidents) Solution enables your company to achieve its safety and financial targets in a controlled, highly efficient and rapid way.
Aim
After defining your objectives and gaining an understanding of the company and its ethos, we first speak to your employees and gather information that measures your current performance across the business.
This stage allows us to create a benchmark that all further work can be measured and assessed against. The results can be split into countries, regions, sites and contracts and we measure it against a company average. This way, you can start to see how each site or contract operates and why some sites may be outperforming others. We can then act on this information in a more detailed way.
One of our main clients utilises the service of foreign workers.
The company recognised that they had a ‘duty of care’ to provide their employees with specific training that is the same as UK based workers would receive.
This project needed to deliver both basic safety and core competency courses, as well as to take the foreign works through the same behavioural package that was being delivered to the rest of the company.
Click below to download the complete project case study:
At Azea, we utilise this face to face time with the employees to explain the structure of the training programme. This phase introduces the initiative to the employees and allows for feedback. It is delivered in such a way that ‘buy in’ is achieved from the start and as such, the roll out should be championed by the company to enthuse the delegates about the programme.
Front Line Supervisors are the people who are directly responsible for communicating, controlling and motivating the workforce (operatives) or who have an impact on operatives through engaging with other Front Line Supervisors.
Azea Limited provided an Emergency Response Evaluation training course to Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions. To find out more about the training course, download the presentation below:
The construction industry needs to take responsibility for health & safety rather than relying on clients to lead, an industry roundtable with Chair of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) Judith Hackitt, has found.
The forum, organised by WSP as part of their internal Spotlight on Safety week and including representatives from around the industry concluded that health & safety is currently delivered effectively on isolated projects but that it has not filtered from projects into the ‘fabric’ of how the industry does business.
We all need to take a more active lead, sharing best practise across companies, engaging earlier on projects and more consistently, and ensuring that high standards are strived for and met. Particularly, designers must recognise the increased role they can play in setting the agenda at the outset of a project.
Managing Director, WSP, Paul Dollin said: “It makes sense that we take the lead – especially where our clients are not construction companies. However the industry needs to be more joined up on this issue to be effective, setting aside commercial concerns and sharing best practise, data and ideas. We need to come together with ‘one voice’ and look at ways to try and facilitate this cross-industry approach. It’s too important not to.” He added that often the industry is guilty of only thinking about their own contribution to the project rather than the project as a whole.
Training of frontline supervisors was also identified as important, however, because ‘gangs’ of workers often travel from one job to another and have developed their own culture it can be difficult to change the way they operate.
Judith Hackitt told the group “To make Health & Safety become part of the culture you need it to be implicit in the way all your staff operate, particularly when senior management is not present to enforce it. Identifying leaders and up skilling them to feel comfortable leading on health & safety principle crucial. A no tolerance attitude needs to govern. You also must engage effectively with your entire supply chain so that this approach filters down.”