Health and Safety – Senior Management Engagement
White paper from Assurity Consulting
1. The importance of senior management engagement
Health and safety senior management engagement refers to the active and visible participation of your top-level executives in the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of your health and safety performance. They set the tone, directly influencing the behaviours and attitudes of employees to health and safety and so are critical to your organisations prevailing culture.
Senior management engagement provides strategic leadership in aligning your health and safety objectives with the wider business goals. It communicates a clear message to employees, contractors, and other stakeholders that safety is a core value rather than just a regulatory obligation. Having said that, regulatory compliance/risk management has been (and still is for many) the primary driver for health and safety in organisations.
Financial risk, particularly with the introduction of revised sentencing guidelines for health and safety and food safety in 2016: and the significant increase in penalties for both organisations and individuals where prosecutions occur (currently about 3 a week on average according to HSE figures) – which may surprise some and certainly does for more than a few directors!
Moral risk management, back to culture and trust, has been a developing driver, hand in hand with EDI, staff attraction/retention, pay and conditions and the greater expectation employees have for their working life. But being a caring employer and having ‘a good place to work’ is always a benefit.
Of all these though, reputational risk management is the aspect that is having most traction. With more information about organisations being expected by consumers, customers, investors and employees, the importance of non-financial risk management (particularly health and safety) cannot be discounted. Are you adding any content/information to your health and safety initiatives? How could you engage with your senior management to deliver better/more/verifiable health and safety content?
Leadership commitment is a key component in safety management systems, i.e. ISO 45001 and publications such as “Leading health and safety at work” (HSE). If your organisation is looking to secure or maintain such systems, what is in place to actively demonstrate this commitment?
All these points offer opportunities to not only promote the positive benefits of successful health and safety management but also remind senior managers of the responsibilities and accountability they have as duty holders.
2. Factors to consider/sell when engaging senior management
Good health and safety is good for business. The positive impacts you and your senior management should be considering and promoting are:
- Keeping employees and others safe in work – effective health and safety management reduces accidents, illnesses, and serious injuries at work (less lost time).
- Complying with legislation – and promoting the positives not just minimising the risk in legal and/or civil action and reputational damage.
- Improving productivity/efficiency – minimising disruptions caused by accidents and incidents, therefore delivering more consistent operations and higher employee productivity.
- More effective cost management – such as compensation claims, medical expenses, legal fees, and insurance premiums.
- Employee morale and retention – a strong health, safety and wellbeing culture improves morale and reduces turnover.
- Positive reputation – being able to demonstrate a positive and proactive safety culture shows professionalism and responsibility, that can help attract better talent, partners, and customers.
- Better risk management – good health and safety management helps identify and control risks before they cause harm, protecting your people, places and processes.
- Better business continuity – serious accidents/safety failures can have a major impact on business; good safety management is key to long-term operational stability.
- Better ethical management – well-managed health and safety reflects ethical leadership and corporate responsibility.
3. What should good senior management be doing?
Senior management can demonstrate genuine and active engagement in health and safety through a variety of practical and visible actions. These include:
Setting the right example
What senior management see as important, so do the rest of the organisation. Adopting or ignoring the health, safety and wellbeing procedures you have in place either helps promote or undermines what you have in place.
Establishing clear policies and objectives
Senior leaders should make sure that robust health and safety policies are in place, clearly articulated, and aligned with the organisation’s goals. Your policies should be more than formal documents – they should reflect the way you want to do business.
Providing resources and support
Effective engagement means not only promoting safety but allocating adequate resources in terms of time, money and people to implement safety initiatives. A mentality of investing– rather than spending – in appropriate risk assessments, training, equipment, and health surveillance is fundamental to good health and safety.
Getting involved
Visibility reinforces the importance of safety and encourages employee involvement. Does your senior management actively participate in health and safety audits, inspections, toolbox talks, or safety meetings, they all demonstrate commitment.
Integrating safety into business process
Put health and safety considerations into your strategic planning, procurement, project management, and operational procedures embeds it into your business operations. Safety becomes ‘business as usual’.
Monitoring performance and learn from incidents
Review your health and safety performance (through e.g. KPIs, accident, incident and near-miss reports) helps make informed decisions. When incidents occur, senior management should lead or be actively involved in investigations and learn from any lessons.
Create the right culture
An engaged senior management team creates a strong health and safety culture. Culture, in this context, is about the shared beliefs, practices, and attitudes toward health and safety across the organisation. A culture shaped by engaged leaders is one where safety is considered everyone’s responsibility.
We’ve seen many examples where senior management getting involved has had a real impact on standards and performance.
4. What barriers to good health and safety management do we see and how can they be avoided?
While few, if any, senior managers have said health and safety is not a priority, there can be several potentially conflicting interests or barriers that can cause challenges in what and how is implemented. These can include:
Competing priorities: business pressures, such as meeting financial targets or deadlines, can sometimes overshadow safety considerations. This can be avoided by using data (i.e. accident investigation information) and your business intelligence to demonstrate the financial and reputational benefits of proactive safety leadership. Underlying causes is key here.
Lack of understanding/training: some senior managers may lack the technical knowledge or understanding of their role in promoting and influencing safety culture. Many directors and senior managers are sadly unaware of their specific responsibilities particularly with health and safety and the law.
This can be avoided by incorporate health and safety leadership training into executive development programs or providing specific training/briefings on health and safety. Current topics, such as Martyn’s law and updated guidance, are always good conversation starters.
Delegation of responsibility: leaders erroneously believing that safety is the responsibility of others – health and safety officers, line managers and even contractors. Yes, everyone has a responsibility for health and safety, but the primary duty is with those who create the risk in being responsible for managing it (to paraphrase the HSE).
This can be avoided by making safety performance visible throughout the organisation, part of senior managers’ appraisals and incentive structures and with good policies, procedures and training in place.
5. In summary
In summary, fundamentally effective senior management engagement is about creating and maintain the culture of the organisation. Promoting and delivering good health and safety benefits everybody, and while some may seem a little more intangible, those benefits can include:
- Reduced incidents, injuries and lost time: a culture led by engaged leaders results in fewer workplace accidents.
- More effective cost management: preventing incidents means less downtime, fewer compensation claims, and lower insurance premiums. As the saying goes if you think safety is expensive, see what having an accident costs!
- Improved compliance and risk management: better systems and clear expectations drives better performance, especially when driven from the top.
- Better employee relations: workers feel more valued and respected, leading to improved morale and lower turnover.
- Enhanced reputation: organisations with a strong safety culture and leadership will attract better talent, customers and potentially investors.
Senior management engagement in health and safety is not optional – it is a fundamental part of business management and those that do it well will benefit from the investment.
By leading from the front and committing to allocate resources, setting the right example and embedding safety within the core of business operations, your senior management have a significant role to play in your health and safety culture.
When your senior management show that health and safety matters to them, it starts to matter to everyone else in the organisation too.
