Everyone wants to feel safe and secure at work, and there are plenty of reasons for employers to prioritize workplace safety and culture. For employees, fewer peripheral worries make it easier to fully enter a flow state and productively engage, which means happier teams and boosted profits, to name just a couple of the potential rewards on the table.
Meanwhile, serving as food for thought for leadership, forging an ironclad safety culture at work will also help with retaining the best talent and reducing workplace risks. One recent worker survey found that 97% of respondents considered safety culture a major factor in choosing where to work, while another identified that workers who feel psychologically safe are less likely to be injured during their workday.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the nuances of corporate culture play an essential role in shaping a sense of safety at work. Why might that be? Well, strong, impassioned, engaged, and emotionally invested teams are not only more productive, but also more mutually supportive and attentive to procedures and the well-being of others.
As corporate investigators here at Lauth Investigations HQ, our work extends beyond aiding businesses experiencing the challenges arising after a negative incident in the workplace. It also includes proactively helping them to reduce risk while increasing every metric of corporate success—from the bottom line to team-wide morale and ultimate employee safety.
Workplace Safety Culture Checklist
To foster a stronger safety culture at work and boost those vital and welcome business-heath metrics, we provide corporate culture audits to a spectrum of American businesses. But first, what does a safety culture at work look like? Here’s a safety culture checklist to help get you started.
1. Strong Hiring Practices
As corporate investigators know all too well, ensuring workplace culture and safety begins with careful recruitment. It’s important that employers enjoy confidence that their latest recruits have a glowing professional track record and no skeletons in the closet. Employee background checks are an excellent tool when striving to better safeguard your team and brand.
2. Shared Mission and Values
Encouraging the kind of employee engagement that allows teams to work mindfully and safely begins with creating a shared sense of not only mission and purpose, but also the whys and values driving employees’ daily actions.
3. Clear Policies and Procedures
Implementing best practices when it comes to procedural safety and behavioral policies is an absolute must for employees aiming to encourage employee confidence. Among these should be communication channels, allowing employees to raise concerns whenever they arise.
4. Critical Risk Assessments
Working environments can be complicated places, with many moving parts, teams, and factors in play. An expert workplace risk assessment can help to reveal potential safety vulnerabilities, for greater peace of mind among both teams and leadership.
5. Ongoing Training and Awareness
Company values and policies, mission statements, and procedures are all but useless if they remain in an employee handbook that nobody takes the time to read. It is crucial that leadership revisit these touchpoints in regular training and showcase them daily in order to keep team awareness high.
6. Unbeatable Corporate Culture
When corporate culture is thriving, it’s easy to see it in the dynamism of a workforce, energetic productivity, positive working relationships, and well-oiled efficiency. But what creates great workplace culture? It is the sum of many parts, including on-point safety practices, free-flowing communication, team alignment on objectives and values, and more factors besides.
Many companies don’t realize that their company culture has declined until a worrying pattern of dipping profits and employee misconduct have manifested. However, it’s entirely possible to get ahead of such perils and reinforce corporate culture with a corporate culture audit. Discover more about how a corporate culture audit works today or contact our team to learn more about how corporate investigators could support your business today.