This pandemic of course has a big impact on your job as a safety officer. Normally, you are mainly outside or in the production plant to check up on the safety culture in the company. It is important to be among the people in the company and observe their safety awareness. These observations are crucial to improve the safety culture of the organization. Over the last week, this has reduced significantly but the workload probably spiked the first week. Now, you need to find a way to maintain the safety of the workers somehow remotely.
First Line Action
The COVID19 most likely created a big spike in the workload the first couple of weeks. Policies were probably not in place for these circumstances and therefore needed to be created in record time. Most companies have never considered this scenario and this being a health-oriented “Black Swan” risk, you as the safety manager were involved heavily. All procedures and policies need to be in place to make sure people have guidance in these times. Also, the work instructions need to be updated and added to comply with new laws and regulations.
Working From Home
The new norm forces most people to work from home. Of course, you can probably be on site every now and then, but the feeling with the employees in production reduces due to the distance. Despite you not being there, the safety risks didn’t reduce, they might even become bigger due to changes in the way people work. Working with less people on the same square meter can increase the safety risks. On the other hand, from home you can upgrade work instructions, procedures, processes and policies. The lack of colleagues will reduce the number of distractions and allows for better focus, of course, only if you don’t have small children.
Delegate
Being able to delegate some of the safety activities is key in this because you cannot be on site. The right technology can help a lot here. The shift manager or other team leaders can do the necessary safety walks, which gives you important information to check on the safety culture. When people on site perform these checks, you get at least an idea about what is going on. Yes, you will be missing some key parts, but together with the couple of days you are on site you should be able to have some sort of feeling.
Training
One other great thing you can do in this period is creating a great training session. Using the right platform, you can send the training session to the employees to make sure that safety stays on top of their mind. This also allows you to utilize the information from the safety checks and incorporate that information directly into such a training. Besides the awareness training, you can always simply upgrade to new employee training sessions or the general safety training.
One Comment