Build your safety community

There is strength in community.

Many of us are familiar with safety committees, departments, or task forces. While those are all valuable when it comes to improving the health and safety of workers, a community offers a more inclusive approach. It involves everyone at an organization—even those without formal safety training or experience—to contribute to a strong safety culture.

For a business to thrive, every employee at every level of the organization must feel part of the safety culture and empowered by its goals. Diversity of thought leads to stronger policies and procedures and increases worker buy-in as everyone can see how they impact the whole organization. It can also help identify the gaps in your safety and health program and help you recruit the best team to address safety challenges and opportunities.

Building your community

To build a safety community, it’s important to understand the motives, strengths, and challenges of its members. Here are six personas who commonly make up an organization’s safety community: 

Change-maker | Motivated by forward progress, the changemaker is always ahead of the curve when it comes to new tools and technologies. With an onward and upward mentality, the changemaker is always discovering techniques and processes to achieve important goals.

Go-getter | The go-getter is driven by the goal of a safe, healthy, and thriving community and they enjoy solving safety and health problems. They are opinionated and compassionate, driven by their vision of a world without injuries or illness.

Enforcer | Known by others in the community to do everything “by the book,” the enforcer wants perfection in compliance, policies, and checklists. Failure is not an option for the enforcer, and they will do anything it takes to always keep workers safe.

Realist | The realist wants to find practical solutions for all safety issues. They are never afraid ask “why?” Why do we do it this way? How will this impact the community?

Rookie | The rookie is new to the safety and health arena and has a strong desire to learn as much as possible. What they lack in experience, they make up for with fresh eyes and enthusiasm.

Ally | For the ally, the team’s greater good is the number one priority. They do not usually come up with ideas, but they will adopt a good idea and create excitement around it. They will support and champion the ideas of others to make everyone safer. 

For more details about each persona, check out our resource, building a safety community. 

Engaging your community 

After identifying the motivations and strengths of those that make up your community, it’s important to learn how to engage them. Finding ways to engage the personas can strengthen safety and health programs and boost worker involvement, leading to a stronger safety culture and improved job satisfaction.

Below are some examples of engagement strategies:

• Invite them to participate in a near-miss program 
• Assign them to help update policies and procedures 
• Ask them to look at the safety and health program for unique insights 
• Assign them to create the safety activities and a training calendar 

Need more ideas? We have a full list of engagement strategies based on individual personas in our resource on strategies to engage personas.

Why build a safety community? 

If we haven’t convinced you yet about the value of a safety community, consider your organization’s safety culture, which often reflects the attitudes, beliefs, and values that people share within an organization, including how safety is managed.

Building a strong safety culture can benefit your organization by creating a more desirable workplace to attract and retain employees, improving morale and productivity, increasing leadership skills, engaging your workforce, and decreasing on-the-job injuries. 

Learn more about safety culture and how the Ansbro Safety Culture Spectrum can help you. If you’re a SAIF policyholder, your safety consultant can discuss it more or share resources to help you build more effective safety programs.