In this the first of our two final posts for 2018, we provide a summary of our Top Ten most read safety articles. We have written a quick summary of each and provided a link back to the original post that also has the research article links. In this way, you will have all the popular themed posts for 2018 accessible from this one post to refer to.
Key Themes in Workplace Safety: Top 10
- Work health and safety reporting for different audiences was by far the most popular post that was read on our site in 2018. One of the key deliverables for safety professionals is providing accurate and useful reporting on monthly safety performance to employees, managers, boards and others outside of your organisation. In this post, we distilled down to the key points of the Safe Work Australia publication that provided some example templates and advice. Read more here.
2. Our readers were keen to know what safety strategies the safest organisations use. The safest companies globally have a safety culture that starts at the very top and integrates through the organisation. Leadership plays a critical role to achieve the best safety performance and is fundamental in ensuring a culture that supports safety improvement to continually maintain the safest behaviors. The organisation’s culture is key to creating the conditions and behaviours that produce your results. Full post here.
3. We asked the question: Are there too many rules for workplace safety? This post discussed how safety rules and regulations are perceived and acted upon using both large and small business examples. You can read more here.
4. Workplace safety myths, culture, training, and interactivity was a post that was read by many and shared on social media. This post brings together research that calls out six workplace safety myths for what they are, discusses safety culture in the context of business size, knowledge and resources and provides in-field research on the effectiveness of safety training using the safety induction as an example. This post concludes with a look at interactive training and tech advances as a way forward to improve EHS performance and reduce workplace fatalities and injuries. Click through.
5. You were interested in the work health and safety interventions that provided the best results. Regulations, inspections, prosecutions, guidance materials, safety campaigns, enforceable undertakings, voluntary partnerships and incentives are the pros and cons are discussed. Read more.
6. Our post on how to determine your WHS business risk profile provided a discussion on contributory factors around the level of knowledge of legal WHS requirements. Key points included documenting the various sources of potential hazards, prioritising the options for risk management and through the hierarchy of control principles selecting the most appropriate and cost-effective hazard elimination or risk minimisation solution. Full post here.
7. We looked at the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy and outlined the key principles, national targets, national priority areas and the 7 key industries that are under the spotlight and the 6 priority work-related conditions. The post focused on musculoskeletal disorders and mental illness to discuss the risks and solutions to prevent these injuries with links to recommended resources. Click through to see more.
8. We talked about the strategic investment of investing in health and safety. There is substantial evidence that the costs associated with an injury or incident due to failures to ensure safety, far outweigh the costs of prevention. CFO’s and Accountants need to understand the critical interdependence that exists between financial and operational risk and place the strategic investment lens over the balance sheet when it comes to future health and safety spending requests. Read more.
9. We investigated casual work arrangements and the impact on workplace health and safety performance. Several studies pointed to increased presenteeism by casual workers caused by fatigue of working additional hours, working while ill, risk-taking behaviour and the threat of layoff and under-reporting of incidents and injuries. Full post here.
10. Our post on the need to continue to update safety training and to keep it relevant was widely read. This post uses fall risks as an example of failure in workplace health and safety training to move more broadly into a discussion about costs, benefits and the business case for WHS training interventions to continually improve safety performance. Read on.
Where Does Interactive Training Fit In?
By law, we need to provide a safe system of work and train our people how to work safely within that environment. We are required to train specifically about workplace hazards and continue to monitor competency and knowledge about the best way to control workplace hazards as part of our work health and safety risk management processes. Research tells us that adults learn differently from each other and varied methods of training delivery should be considered. Passive learning such as reading a text, watching PowerPoint slides and videos have a limited effect on safety performance. Classroom training fails to acknowledge the need for self-paced learning that most adult learners require. Literacy, language proficiency and learning disabilities e.g. dyslexia, all affect the consumption of training, the acquisition of knowledge and the transferring of that knowledge into practice.
So where does interactive training fit in? Research across a number of disciplines shows that engagement and interactivity are key to embedded knowledge and influence on work health and safety behaviour (click here for research on the effectiveness of using mobile devices to train). Tap into Safety offers interactive and engaging work health and safety training that is delivered via smart devices and online. Our software has been designed to support workers with low literacy or minimal English language capabilities. We don’t use PowerPoint, we use real workplace photographic, panoramic examples that workers relate to because they show their work sites. The training is delivered in 15-minute modules and can be even be accessed by sub-contractors with their competencies verified before they step foot on site. Pre-built and custom content is available. If you’d like to know more please click through and try a free online demo.