New Statistics Show Health & Safety Is Still Not Priority

According to a recent survey, there’s a high percentage of workers, in a variety of industries, who feel the safety procedures within their job could be significantly improved. This is a worrying statement for the health and safety of these people.

The National Safety Council ran the ‘Employee Perceptions of Workplace Safety’ survey, targeting a wide range of workers from across a variety of industries. The majority of participants were between 25 and 64, with a fairly even male/female split and organisations with 30 to over 4,000 employees.

As Health & Safety Week comes to a close for another year, the results of the survey were somewhat surprising…

• 58% of construction workers say safety takes a backseat to productivity.

• 37% of those surveyed feel that they have no involvement within their companies health and safety issues.

• 61% of workers said that their organisation has no onsite emergency responders or employees trained to handle medical emergencies.

• Only 44% strongly agree that safety training is part of every new employee’s orientation.

• Worryingly, 40% of workers feel that management does only the MINIMUM required by law to keep employees safe.

• Overall, 36% of the 2000 employees across 14 industries surveyed by the National Safety Council said that they feel productivity is prioritised over safety and 47% feel that performance standards are higher for job tasks than for safety.

If you feel as though the health & safety procedures within your business could be improved for both managers and employees, a good staff induction programme could be imperative in helping new starters to understand your policy.

It has been proven that 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for over three years if they experience a great on-boarding process – so how do your inductions work?

If you work in an environment where accidents can happen fairly easily, such as on construction sites or where heavy machinery is operated, an induction process where staff are made to read and review health & safety policies immediately can drastically minimise risk.

We have developed induct software that can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Visitors, contractors and new staff members can complete their inductions online before they even set foot on site. It allows you to monitor how well they have understood your health & safety procedure with the use of questionnaires at the end of each module – if they fail the questions that you have set, they’re made to retake the quiz until the information is understood.

Within induct&train, you can upload videos which must be watched before progressing to the next stage, add health & safety documents to read and administrators are able to store all personal details of each employee including relevant qualifications and skills.

After the induction process, admin users can then access individuals records to see who is best qualified / skilled for relevant projects and keep track of contractors who may need to re-take the induction process if they have been away from the site for a considerable amount of time.

Induct software is a cost effective and efficient way to update staff on health and safety when they are new to the business or starting a new project.

Working in an environment where potential risks are everywhere can be daunting for even the most experienced health & safety manager. The priority is to essentially keep your workforce safe and away from any accidents or emergencies.

When statistics show that staff believe productivity often takes precedence over safety, it’s time to review your health & safety policies and ensure all staff feel safe within their job role at all times.

If you need advice on how to improve health and safety through the correct induction process, read more about what our induct&train can offer.