Employees’ safety concerns

For a safety culture change intervention to be successful, there must be a climate of trust between employees and management. This includes declaring a truce and moving the focus away from injury blame fixing and fault finding to a safe space where injuries can be reported without fear of reprimand—a space where employees safety concerns can be freely expressed. This amnesty is the only way to create a climate in which old embedded safety habits and beliefs can change. 

You will routinely be pulled in many directions as your Job requires responding to leadership and employee safety concerns that you are handed or that routinely develop. How many times have you set a schedule for the day and then your manager stops by your office and states Oh, by the way, I Just came from a meeting and you need to do X immediately This is a case where you have to change your agenda and do what is asked. Consider this as the typical interaction that can alter your daily course. 

Of course, some of these employee safety concerns may be unfounded - in whieh case the relevant employee deserves a good explanation as to why this is so. However, many concerns will be valid, and it only takes one real safety issue to cause an accident. The important thing is to deal with employee safety concerns in a transparent way. 

Environmental and safety concerns regarding acid-based processes are promoting research and development efforts on solid-acid alkylation processes. Liquid catalysts pose possible risks to the environment, employees, and the general public from accidental atmospheric releases. Also, these acid... 

Human Capital Readiness Are employees properly trained and staffed to meet the requirements of the new design Does the design introduce any safety concerns ... 

Criterion 3. Employees are concerned with the same questions as investors and lenders. They also have special interest in salaries, occupational safety and health, employment stability, and career opportunities. With less mobility than management, they may be opposed to plant relocations and new plant investment abroad. They may be more interested in salary and wage increases than in dividend payout. 

This chapter presents methods for meeting the requirements of the federal regulations concerning public and employee safety. Additional information is provided for some aspects of process safety that are not included in this legislation but can affect the safety of operations in facihties handling hazardous materials. There are other resources for analysis and control of general industrial hazards [3, 4]. 

Facility enviromnent, safety, and health data and identification of environment, safety, and health issues to develop improvements required in the site ISMS Worker or operator suggestions from the Employee Concerns Program and employee safety organizations ... 

If exiting employees are not voicing safety concerns, then the organization may not have the necessary knowledge required to prompt corrective action, and the new employee (even those with realistic expectations of the normal safety risk profile for the job type) may be about to enter a job with an unacceptable level of safety risk (beyond those normally associated with the type of work). Thus, new employee safety will be enhanced if a workplace has a safety voicing culture, where employees freely share safety information, and this is supported and reinforced by both management and co-workers. In contrast, a new employee that enters a workplace which has a silence culture, or has employees that want to voice about safety but feel they cannot for some reason, can be exposed to more safety risk than is necessary. 

While it is clear that a new employee s behavior will (more or less) go through a period of adjustment in their initial employment period, itis also likely that their verbal behavior will change (also see Chap. 4. sect. 4.2.9). It is well established that employees voicing of safety concerns is an important aspect of workplace safety (Hofmann and Morgeson 1999 Kath et al. 2010). To a considerable extent the development of voicing behaviors will be dependent on the development of trust relationships with supervisors (Conchie et al. 2012), and with co-workers... 

Tucker et al. 2008). Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately, see Sect. 7.7) trust relationship take time to develop. Thus, new employees may initially be particularly reluctant to speak up about safety concerns, until they determine the type of reaction they are likely to get from co-workers, supervisors and management. New employees may refrain from voicing safely concerns from a fear of retaliation (Collinson 1999 Jeffcott et al. 2006), a fear of being viewed negatively (e.g., Milliken et al. 2003), or an assumption that safety violations may be normalized behavior (Ashford and Anand 2003). 

Management will be quick to respond to the safety concerns of employees Management are quick to respond to the safety concerns of employees... 

I will raise safety concerns New employees raise safety concerns... 

Organizations commitment to a safety voicing culture Why new employees may initially be reluctant to voice safety concerns, and the risks this may pose... 

Whistleblower Protection — Instruction should include information on the right of an employee to question the safety practices of an employer without the risk of losing his/her job or being subject to reprisals for stating a safety concern (29 CFR 1978). 

A safe space now needs to be created where employees can feel comfortable about discussing and reporting safety-related issues. This employee empowerment enables management to get a realistic picture of what the safety concerns are in the workplace. Real solutions can only come from the experts in the workplace—the employees. Employees need to be listened to. Reporting systems should be anonymous. In a positive safety culture it is not who reported, but what was reported. Focusing on the what is important because that is the risk that needs to be remedied. 

There must be a quick, easy, and effective way for employees to communicate safety concerns, high-risk conditions and acts, and high potential near-miss incidents to the line management without them being worried about repercussions. 

Make representations to the management, or the safety committee, concerning hazards and threats to employees safety and health. 

With respect to communications about safety, results of the survey illustrate that safety leaders at leading carriers create an atmosphere in which employees are free to raise safety concerns and there is open and continuous dialogue among employees, supervisors, and managers about safety issues. 

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