We’ve written about the need for employee engagement on safety in several blog posts, most recently in this one. But sustaining employee engagement can be tricky: how do you keep them interested and active in supporting your safety goals after the initial push to educate and empower?

One key way to do this is aligning organizational goals with employee-level goals. By creating clear goals for both the management and employee levels—then communicating the interdependence of them—you make employee engagement more sustainable.

With the New Year comes new enthusiasm. You have the opportunity to take stock of your safety initiatives and plot a new strategy for enhancing the culture of safety at your organization. Here’s a list of smart, timely articles to help you getting started.

Safety & Health Magazine’s 2014 State of Safety

The Campbell Institute, the National Safety Council center of excellence for environmental, health and safety management, is the leading authority on safety best practices. In the fall of 2012, members of the Campbell Institute Research & Knowledge subcommittee conducted a comparative analysis of ten award-winning organizations to identify best practices that are common within recognized world class safety programs. 

Every safety manager is faced with the challenge of complacency at some point in their career.  Other business priorities (i.e. increased productivity, improved quality, and profitability) can distract managers and employees from their safety mission. This distraction causes employees to stop paying attention to their surroundings, resulting in increased risk to the organization and a rise in the number of near misses and incidents. The importance of safety in the organization becomes a “nice to do” rather than an integral component of the job.

So, how do you keep employees motivated, engaged, and even passionate about safety?  It starts with you. We’ve all heard the phrase “talk is cheap”. This is especially true when it comes to safety. To keep the message alive, it takes more than a presentation or posters on the wall.  Managers need to put actions behind the words to demonstrate their commitment to safety.

Developing and enhancing a strong and successful safety culture has many benefits to an organization.  In Part 1 of this series, we focused on the role of Leadership in creating a culture of safety within an organization. Equally important is employee engagement.

Just as your corporate culture includes and affects all employees – from top management to the front line workers – so does a safety culture. Consider what your organization would look like if only top executives or only line employees practiced safe habits in the workplace. You would see inconsistencies in process, gaps in buy-in and more incidents and injuries. A safety culture can only grow when everyone in the company embraces safety as a key component in their everyday work.

There are two basic elements to creating and sustaining a safety culture: Leadership and Employee Engagement. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we will examine the management factors that drive safety as a core value of the company culture. 

Developing and enhancing a strong company safety culture can change the landscape of an organization and pay incredible dividends. Without active participation by all members of an organization, a safety culture will not evolve and the safety management system cannot reach its full potential.

Investing in workplace training is money well spent. Employers with effective safety and health training programs benefit from fewer workplace injuries and claims, better employee morale, and lower insurance premiums. Following are the seven steps recommended by OSHA for the development and implementation of an effective safety training program.  

When it comes to workplace injuries, worker's compensation is just the tip of the iceberg. Do you know what costs are lurking below the surface? Learn the true cost of workplace injuries by downloading and sharing our new infographic.

The primary goal of workplace safety is to strive for a hazard free environment. However, despite our best efforts, events occur that demonstrate gaps in the system. Properly recognizing these events and determining the correct follow-up actions can be tricky. To help safety managers better respond to these events, it is important to understand the distinction between them: