Spring is considered a time for renewal. A time to put away the coldness of the past and to celebrate new life.

Often, however, the spring can be a time not to just drop the past, but to take lessons and learn from them in order to move forward with progress and regeneration. And sometimes it makes sense that to keep the lessons of the past in mind, you might need to take a snapshot – either mental, physical or digital – to serve as a motivator or incentive to evaluate and make the necessary changes so past mistakes are not repeated.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user cinzila delman via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user cinzila delman via a Creative Commons license]

In the area of occupational heath and safety, using the springtime as an opportunity to assess and evaluate your safety protocols is a valuable exercise. There can never be anything negative to come out of an honest evaluatio of your safety programs to understand what has worked, what didn’t work, why, and know the steps to take to fix those problems so the program gets a renewal and the company takes another step closer to eliminating preventable incidents and injuries.

Tool of the Trade

Probably one of the more important tools that can be at yiur disposal is what is called a Safety Culture Snapshot Survey, or a “snapshot.” As with an actual photograph, this survey helps safety professionals take a “snapshot” of the company at a particular moment in time. The survey can be used at any point, and feedback could be obtained not just from observation by the safety officer but also by comments from supervisors and rank-and-file workers.

The idea is to go beyond the safety program and look into the overall culture of the company. Does the company promote safety among its workers, and does it have follow-through? Are the supervisors and employees buying in? Does the C-suite advocate, support and help enforce the program? Is the concept of safety passed down to new workers effectively (especially true in industries of high personnel turnover)?

The Survey Details

The snapshot covers some general topics and asks the safety officer (and/or survey participants) to assess specific items in each general category on a scale of 1 to 6 points, with 6 points given in those areas where the company “always” does something, down to 1 point for “never” doing something. There are six general safety culture categories, and the goal is for the company to post 18 or more points in all of the categories. If any category has 17 or fewer points, those are considered areas where issues may need to be addressed. The more specific areas can reveal those problem areas if those scores are 3 or less.

Following are the general categories of safety culture, and the items being assessed under each category:

  1. Communicating: Safety discussions at team meetings; information conveyed in an understandable way; managers take advantage of opportunities to stress the importance of safety.
  2. Leading: Managers enforce rules, follow through on safety commitments, stop unsafe work, and follow the safety rules themselves.
  3. Knowing: Workers/managers have the skills to do the job safely; workers know the rules and understand them, get a full introduction to health and safety and are given ongoing training to reinforce safety protocols.
  4. Resourcing: Enough time for safe work; enough resources; enough time given to fix health and safety issues; enough people available to do the work.
  5. Reporting and Learning: All incidents are reported; near-misses are accounted; hazards are reported properly; incidents treated as “teachable moments.”
  6. Involving: Safety meetings held with floor staff; Encouragement of workers to raise safety issues; managers try to resolve said issues; worker participation in safety meetings.

This tool and several tohers are available for download and use at www.ohsinsider.com.