Mar 3, 2020
Safety leadership is beyond just giving your word. You have to "walk the walk" and act with integrity day in and day out. A strong safety culture commits to making the impossible possible and ensures your crews return home safely at the end of their shift. You don't have to look to a major construction megaproject, or patroleum industry turnaround to see hazards waiting to happen.
One can look to a local landscaping company for transformational leadership in this issue. For Fred Peratt, owner of Environmental Enhancements in Sterling, Virginia, considers a strong safety culture their "primary responsibility."
For Peratt, it is a personal mission to make sure every employee returns home safely at the end of each day. For Peratt, the benefits of a working safety culture extend beyond the workers. Safety promotes professionalism to Environmental Enhancement's clients, vendors, and subcontractors. A safe company presents an image as one who cares and that message matters.
A safety culture enables you to bring the skills learned in safety training and apply them to everyday life. Beyond the obvious health benefits of a safety culture, don't overlook the financial benefits of running a safe organization. Due to the reduced amount of injuries, there are lower insurance premiums and less downtown in general.
Costly repairs to damaged equipment will also be significantly reduced. An inclusive safety culture puts skin in the game for everyone within the organization. Older workers understand the risk of a bad situation becoming even worse. Ideally, they can use their years' worth of safety training and then mentor younger workers who may not have extensive experience working with a safety culture.
Experienced workers know a perfect safety culture is a destination one can never arrive at but always strive toward. What can a landscaping company do to cultivate such a thriving culture of safety in its organization? It starts with a top-down approach to safety leadership. Safety must permeate the whole company from the management on down.
The landscaping field harbors a number of work hazards, and simply saying you’re committed to safety isn’t enough to keep your crews safe day in and day out. You have to walk the walk and have a true safety culture to protect your employees.
“A safety culture is extremely important because our primary responsibility is for every employee to arrive home safely every day,” says Fred Peratt, owner of Environmental Enhancements, based in Sterling, Virginia. “Safety promotes professionalism to our clients, suppliers, subcontractors and employees, which shows we care as an organization.”
Creating a strong safety culture allows you to take the practices covered in your safety program and turn them into a way of life for your employees.
Some of the benefits of having a safety culture include lower insurance premiums, less downtime thanks to fewer injuries, reduced equipment damage, minimized vehicle accidents and pride of ownership with all employees.
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