Driving Improved Workplace Safety Through Cultural Change

The next step to safer workplaces is driving workplace culture change from the ground up. And that means businesses creating stronger worker engagement and participation practices, where workers lead discussions about improving workplace health and safety culture. When workers prioritise their own health and safety, they can influence each other to promote safer driving practices. 

And there’s a lot at stake. According to NZTA, if an employee drives after less than 6 hours sleep, their risk of crash triples. Triples. International research suggests that fatigue could be a factor in up to 25% of fatal crashes and distraction a factor in 20% of fatal crashes. The Ministry of Transport shows that in 2014, speeding was a contributing factor in 78 fatal crashes, 357 serious injury crashes and 995 minor injury crashes. The total social cost of crashes involving drivers speeding was about $740 million, which is approximately 23 percent of the social cost associated with all injury crashes. Employees need to be aware of statistics like these and know that the rules and policies in place are for their own protection and that of their peers.

Workplace safety improves when the safety culture is integrated within the company. The coordination is not just between employees, but contractors, directors, safety officers, operations managers, job schedulers etc. 
It’s helpful for workers and employers to ask themselves some questions to know how up to speed the company currently is in making the workplace a safer environment:

•    Are you aware of the new health and safety legislation? 
•    Did you know that companies with a vehicle or fleet of vehicles HAVE to do due diligence on the fleet? 
•    Do you have a company driving policy in place? 
•    Are pre-vehicle checks part of the policy or driver’s responsibilities?
•    What are your driver’s exposures to danger? Remote, area/ Hazardous area 
•    Do you know where your employees are?
•    What are the driving behaviours like within the company?
•    What Journey Management procedures are in place?

Enabling greater worker participation and leadership in driving cultural change is the next step in creating safer working environment. You all deserve it. 

Have you implemented policy in your workplace to avoid accidents? Download our Workplace Health & Safety Ebook and get up to speed with the changes.