Management commitment
Responsibility for safety starts at the top. By demonstrating your commitment to safety, your workers will see that you’re serious about protecting their wellbeing.
Benefits of management commitment
- Your workers are among your greatest assets, so it makes good business sense to protect them.
- Showing that you're committed to safety will help build a positive workplace culture.
- If your workers see that work health and safety is important to you, they are more likely to follow safety procedures and raise safety issues.
How to show your commitment
To develop a strong safety culture and demonstrate your commitment, you should:
Lead by example
- Show interest and enthusiasm about your workers' health, safety and wellbeing.
- Lead health and safety activities in the workplace.
- Participate in safety training and wear personal protective equipment if required.
- Don't take short cuts – always follow your work health and safety procedures.
Demonstrate that health and safety is a priority
- Encourage open discussion about work health and safety and opportunities for improvement.
- Make health and safety a key and regular topic at team meetings.
- Give positive feedback to individuals and teams for good safety performance.
- Explain and demonstrate that getting the job done isn’t more important than worker safety.
Build health and safety into your business plans
- Have a clear health and safety policy(DOCX, 0.02 MB).
- Set business goals/targets for health and safety performance.
- Include health and safety responsibilities in people’s job descriptions.
- Implement procedures and processes for working safely.
Allocate resources to health and safety
- Make sure your workers understand what their health and safety responsibilities are.
- Give your workers time to perform their work safely and participate in training and meetings.
- Allocate work time to your workers with special safety roles.
- Make sure your workers have the equipment they need to work safely.
Fix problems quickly
- Monitor your business’ safety performance.
- Take effective action immediately to fix problems.
- Correct poor or unsafe worker behaviour fairly, respectfully, and quickly.
- Understand why workers are not complying with your procedures and make changes to your processes where possible.
Learn more about safety leadership and developing a safety culture.