The Need for a Strong Safety Culture in the Workplace Essay

The right to a safe and healthy workplace is one of the legal guarantees that employees in the United States have under workplace rights. Furthermore, Health and safety is one of the most important aspects in the internal environment for an organization. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an organization within the U.S. Department of Labor that created what is known as the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The mission of OSHA and its act is to prevent work related injuries, illness, and death by setting rules, regulations, and standards for workplace health and safety. Since the establishment of OSHA and its Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, workplace fatalities have been cut by forty percent, and occupational injury and illness rates have been cut by sixty percent, proving their success in improving worker safety and health (1). OSHA has been able to accomplish this by implementing training programs for the employees within many different companies, but especially for those in construction and hard labor. They create these programs because they know that some working sites are more dangerous than others. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that those in the construction industries have a “4.6 in 100 chance of being injured on or getting sick from their jobs”

According to the Bureau of Labor, statistics indicate that more than 4.1 million people were hurt or injured on-the-job in 2006 and 5,488 were killed in 2007 (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, & Cardy, 2010, p. 511). Laws and regulatory requirements are currently in place to standardize and promote workplace safety. Organizations with extensive safety programs have reduced number of accidents, decreased workers’ compensation claims and lawsuits and lesser accident-related expenditures (Gomez-Mejia, et al, 2010, p. 511). This paper discusses the effects of legal, safety and regulatory requirements in

A culture of safety requires the commitment of leadership to positively impact outcomes. Recent emphasis on the new CMS guidelines and third party reimbursement initiatives associated with patient outcomes, has grabbed the attention of leadership at all healthcare organizations. Additionally, our system wide organization’s employee culture of safety survey has shown that communication and teamwork are areas were improvements are needed. Years of research on communication and teamwork in highly reliable organizations support a correlation with safety. (XX) One of the most important and highly

First is collective mindfulness. These means everyone within is expected to understand that issues may arise that can cause serious safety concerns. Safety is everyone’s responsibility as well as collective and shared responsibility (Ratwani, Hettinger and Fairbanks, 2014, p. 3). Second factor is dealing with reporting. There are processes in place that will report safety issues if one arises. The organization makes sure that the reports are easily accessible and useable as well as followed-up with. Lastly, is creating a culture that understands mistakes happen. Staff may not go around blaming others when something is interrupted, it is a team and events take place when humans are involved. This type of culture helps individuals know there are processes in place, provided by leadership to handle these type of serious safety events (Ratwani, Hettinger and Fairbanks, 2014). A major role to implement patient safety is by the use of health IT

When employers hear the word OSHA they fear the worst. However, the purpose of OSHA is to provide a safe working environment for all personnel (Bernardin & Russell, 2013). The majority of the time companies that panic over OSHA is organizations that are lacking knowledge regarding rules and policies. The OSHA website has an abundant amount of resources available for both employees and employers to conduct research as well as training. After visiting the www.OSHA.gov website, the additional recommendations are given to the Dynamic Duo Inc. owners to ensure the company is establishing a safety culture among their employees.

Workplace Safety – 7/21/2014 - 9/14/2014 – Developed an Accident / Incident process that included addressing near-miss conditions in an effort to make the workplace safer for all employees. The program emphasized the importance of bringing potentially dangerous conditions to management’s attention and provided procedures to correct the condition. An accident /incident reporting process was established and a designated industrial medical facility to provide worker’s compensation care was identified. Employees, supervisors and managers were trained on the importance of workplace safety and the procedures to follow when a potential unsafe condition existed, or when a workplace incident or injury occurred.

Accidents in the workplace is a serious issue, and you pay dearly if an employee is injured or killed due to an unsafe or dangerous working environment, especially when it's caused by company negligence. You and your management team must understand the laws surrounding the safety of the workplace, and put education training in place for "what if" situations that protects your employees and

Communicating and reporting are the first steps to change and improving our Safety Culture. Let’s keep moving the needle of Safety awareness in the right direction.

Health and Safety until very recently have been terms and conditions that have been overlooked by many industry participants. Companies don’t want have to spend their money and time on something they feel does not contribute directly to the production process and

Healthcare organizations endeavor to enhance patient safety, although culture changes cannot be enforced without identifying and working within the local culture which could either aid in setting an acceptable perspective or persistently encourage harmful attitudes (Curtin, 2011, p. 44). Hence, establishing a safety culture is the result of one’s and the organization’s principles, point-of-views, abilities, understanding, and behavioral patterns that dictate the obligation to the health and safety regulation of an organization. Furthermore, the safety culture of an organization consists of the following features: a leadership that recognizes a high-risk setting; partnership, application of proven approach, open communication, continuous education,

To guarantee the safety of employees and help prevent injuries and exposure or contact with hazardous or toxic materials on the job, employers must be familiar and comply with the rules and regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and provide a hazard-free work place. The protection of employee health and safety is regulated by the government. Non-compliance or violations of OSHA standards could find employers subject to costly fines, and even worse, injury or death of an employee. This can easily be prevented by employers familiarizing and educating themselves and their employees about creating and maintaining a safe working environment by providing training and having materials easily accessible to employees.

As the safety field has evolved, there is a growing recognition of the role that organizational leadership plays in prioritizing safety, through actions such as establishing a culture of safety. It has been suggested that leadership is defined as one of the most significant facilitators for establishing and promoting a culture of safety. 1 Research and practice from the Center for Creative Leadership suggests that collective leadership is more effective in creating direction, alignment and commitment, particularly in organizations that face challenges of uncertainty and complexity.2 Moreover, Hospital managers should develop and apply appropriate policies and strategies to reduce occupational stress turnover intention and consequently improve patient safety.3 However, without understanding the culture within an organization, it is difficult to improve stems and ensure that robust quality and patient safety processes are implemented effectively.

Today there are multiple motives for employing a place of work hazard free mindset work culture. Ultimately the objective for a successful, productive and safe place of work should be liberated from exposure to hazards that place customers and employees at risk. There are many convincing motivations for establishing an in-work place safety plan, however the biggest motivator to companies are for reasons of conformity to directives from federal, state, and local governing agencies. Undesirable press, and penalties that inevitably happen without a safety plan, will cost business, create loss of human capital and force workers compensation insurance premiums to rise.

As a team player at Beckman we can only improve upon safety when all leadership becomes aware of the commitment to change and empower all players to openly share within the safety platform. When an organization does not make aware a safety program for their team, team members will be unwilling to share in practices and report adverse events and unsafe working conditions due to fear of retaliation or the belief that in the end it will not matter anyway, things will never change, or why report.

Harry is proving to have taken a very passive position in ensuring the safety of the employees which was a responsibility that David had entrusted him with. With passive leaders, negativity toward or lack of interest in safety suggests to employees that occupational safety is not important and is undeserving of their attention (Nielsen, Morten Birkeland 2016). The foreman passive form of leadership increased the occupational safety risk by ignoring to report the safety guard issue, and failure to address to his coworkers the importance of ensuring to perform their duties diligently. His action directly compromised the safety off the employees through his behavior lead to a negative safety perception within the employees. The health and safety report also raise questions whether management played an active role in ensuring that the shop complied to the standard safety act. A company should do internal audits that comply with the specific standard guidelines in an industry to avoid any injuries, lawsuits of fines from government agents responsible for ensuring the industry is in compliance with some established standard other than what they refer to as satisfactory according to the maintenance