Every year, millions of people work on construction sites full of hazards and conditions that cause bodily harm. That’s why a culture of safety is vital to any construction site. If you want to improve your organization’s safety culture, check out our tips for construction site practices.
Continuous Training
For some, safety training begins at the beginning of employment and then comes up again afterward. But safety isn’t something you check off a list—it requires continuous effort and training to instill safe strategies and methods at a site.
It helps to personalize the training for construction workers. Sometimes, workers know that parts of safety training don’t relate to their position, so they become bored and tune out, possibly missing crucial information. Continue training and education with personalized sessions so that everyone gets the information they need to work safely.
PPE Inspections
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is essential to the safety of workers at a construction site, so you want to ensure everyone’s PPE is compliant and capable. Improve the PPE worker compliance on the job by holding frequent inspections and, if you provide the PPE for workers, replacing and upgrading the equipment as it ages and wears.
You should also educate workers about why PPE is essential to their safety and duties. You can’t police every worker all the time, so you want to make sure they understand how important it is to police themselves.
Involve Worker Input
If you want to improve the safety culture at a construction site, you will not be able to do it on your own. Culture comes as much from the workers as it does from management, so you’ll want to seek input and feedback from the workers themselves about the safety culture.
Where could the safety culture be improved? When do they not feel safe while working and what can be done to improve the conditions? They’re the most in danger while working, so safety training and protocols should be tailored to their feedback.
Incentivize Safe Behavior
Everyone understands how vital safety is on a construction site, but education and training aren’t the most exciting parts of work. It’s easy for workers to get complacent. One way to keep workers focused and engaged is to reward those practicing safe work strategies and behaviors.
Some examples of safe behaviors to incentivize include:
- Reporting unsafe hazards
- Attending safety meetings
- Offering safety feedback
- Adhering to safe working practices
Just be careful about incentives regarding days without incidents—they incentivize underreporting accidents.
Emphasize Safety as a Priority
Creating a safety culture isn’t something you can do in one day or even one week—it’s a constant focus that requires repetition. Every day at work, everyone should understand that safety is the priority and always will be at the work site.
