Last Updated on April 17, 2023 by Admin
The best way to ensure that your contracting business succeeds and develops a good reputation in the industry is by prioritizing safety. More than costs, productivity, and deadlines, safety is what many other businesses look for when choosing a contracting business to conduct work.
Not only are your employees the best asset in your company but ensuring that good safety procedures are completed is important to ensure the safety of your client’s assets. Read below on how you can help to build a better safety culture for your business and to build your business’s reputation.
#1. Ensure that Safety is Communicated
 As with anything else, the best way to remind workers about safety and ensure that it’s on everyone’s mind when working is by communicating it. Making safety a priority means making sure that all workers on site are aware of the risks and hazards and know how to follow correct procedures.
According to OSHA, a Safety Stand-Down can be conducted which is a voluntary event for employers to talk directly to employees about safety. Any workplace can hold a stand-down by taking a break to focus on “Fall Hazards” and reinforcing the importance of “Fall Prevention”.
For example, for the roofing business, this can be done by conducting daily site inspections and safety meetings with the team whenever meeting at a job site.
Ensuring safety is communicated results in fewer accidents less costly roofers insurance. Even though many of the points will be repetitive, it is important that all workers are reminded of proper safety techniques.
#2. Hold Everyone Accountable
 It shouldn’t only be just the Site Superintendent or Safety Inspector who is responsible for ensuring the safety of everyone on-site, but it should be a collective responsibility. Building a stronger safety reputation is completed by holding everyone accountable for safety and watching out for each other.
All subcontractors, workers, and individuals should have the necessary training to know what to look out for and how the correct procedures should be followed. For example, for a new construction project, every electrician should be held accountable to keep an eye out for safety hazards.
On top of promoting safety preventive measures and achieve a lower chance of incidents happening, this can also lead to reduced monthly premiums on your electricians insurance. A third-party inspector or Supervisor can’t always have eyes on everyone, but by ensuring that everyone is trained, you can help to reduce the chance of any accidents on site.
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#3. Reward Good Behavior
 Use incentives to reward workers who follow good safety practices, and discipline or correct behaviors that can result in accidents. Encourage workers to be proactive on-site, by wearing proper personal protective equipment (PPE), making suggestions on procedures, reporting unsafe practices, and conducting lessons learned.
Similarly, when workers are not following safety procedures or doing something to make an accident more likely, discipline and correct the behavior as soon as it’s seen. By encouraging employees for proactive approaches to safety, you can reduce the number of accidents and damages on site.
#4. Training
 The single best way to improve the safety of your employees and build a better safety culture is through training, training, and more training. Ensure that your workers have the proper training to carry out the work and conduct regular training courses to reinforce the knowledge and best practices.
Good safety culture doesn’t come about through just a single safety course but needs to be a regular and continuous program to reinforce the best safety practices. Since the new normal had started, there have been widely available training courses conducted online especially in the construction industry.
In fact, a very helpful resource was published by OSHA Outreach Training Program consisting of PDF Training Handouts with guidelines for both the trainers and students should you resort to conducting a training initiative within your company.
