Did you know that engaged workers are:
- Five times less likely to have a safety incident
- Seven times less likely to have a lost time incident
Now that you do, it's time to ask yourself a simple but important question. How engaged are your employees?
Research has shown that engaged workers:
- Work more safely
- Are more productive
- Make better use of organizational resources
- Are less likely to look for other employment opportunities
- Are more supportive of organizational changes
- Have lower rates of absenteeism
A Gallup study by Harter, Schmidt, Kilham, and Agrawal found that companies with more engaged employees were 12% more profitable and 18% more productive on average. Their employees were 25% more likely to stay with the company and were almost 50% less likely to suffer workplace incidents or injuries.
All of this points to a single fact: a lack of effective worker participation in safety leads directly to adverse outcomes.
Improving worker participation will not only provide more accurate and timely data and create a more efficient safety process, but will also ensure your organization is continuously building a world-class health and safety program that is set up for success.
The Role of Technology in Worker Participation
How many action items does your organization have? How many of those have been accepted? How many people attended the last safety meeting?
How many people have even read and acknowledged the company health and safety policy?
Without the right technology, it's nearly impossible to get these numbers. However, if your employees are equipped with the necessary tools (which just so happen to be the same phones and tablets they use in their everyday lives), you can implement systems that will increase their level of engagement.
This is critical. As an employer, you need to base your organizational decision making on facts, not guesses or assumptions. But without the right data in hand, guessing is all you can do.
That's where tech solutions come in. Allowing workers to immediately identify hazards on the field and instantly assign a corrective action to have it rectified is efficiency at its best. By eliminating the lag time between the front line and the boardroom, communication throughout the organization becomes seamless.
Enabling Worker Participation
Motivating and inspiring workers to succeed is essentially facilitating their growth. Educating and arming those who are reaching for excellence recognizes their efforts and paves their path to success.
Ask yourself what might be discouraging your workers from participating in workplace safety. Is management’s reluctance to adopting new technology the answer? A recent survey by EHS Daily Advisor found that to be a major barrier to worker participation.
Or is it management’s inability to motivate, inspire, and educate employees? The survey also identified “lack of management support” as a major barrier.
Safety is about more than just avoiding incidents. It’s about communication. It’s about leadership. It’s about worker participation. So ask yourself again, how engaged are your employees?