How we can help you develop in your role as a Leader, Manager, Supervisor or Safety Professional
How we can help you develop and sustain a positive culture within your workforce
Helping you recruit the right person into the right role, and aiding their ongoing development
Professional development (or CPD as it is often referred to) is an essential component to building a long term sustainable safety culture within your organisation. Without appropriate planning, implementation and regular monitoring most professional development programs do not achieve the results you were expecting and can have negative effect on the person experiencing the program.
CPD obligations are common to most professions, but are possibly the most important in the delivery of Occupational Health and Safety on a day to day basis. CPD can be defined as a structured approach to learning to help ensure competence to practice, taking in knowledge, skills and practical experience. CPD can involve any relevant learning activity, whether formal and structured or informal and self-directed.
In almost all European countries (and increasingly in others) the vast majority of safety practitioners, safety officers, safety managers, safety specialists, safety consultants, or safety advisors are legally obliged to partake in CPD with at least one recognised institute, such as The International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) or The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
Within both Institutes membership structure CPD forms an integral part of the proof of competence and is regularly reviewed to ensure it is being maintained to the right levels. It is also becoming more apparent that good CPD programs are being built into membership categories for bodies relating to the Mining, Construction and Manufacturing industries.
At Safety Coaching we believe a detailed professional development program in safety is essential for all levels of management, irrespective of levels of experience or current skills levels. Safety Coaching can help your organisation by carefully mapping the right professional development programs against your current and future risk profiles, as well as your current level of safety maturity. We will help you monitor performance levels and ensure the key issues identified from the training become embedded within your systems and processes.
Building professional development in safety is not just about technical skill or legal compliance, it is much, much larger than this. The area which is often most neglected within programs is the interpersonal skills of your personnel in order to effectively engage, listen and communicate with your internal teams, customer base, key stakeholders and other interested parties.
All to often we see Safety Practitioners and Line Management personnel with good level qualifications in safety often costing companies significant amount of money, but they are unable to improve or deliver on the safety performance due to their inability to influence the people who really matter. It is time to think differently. At Safety Coaching we can map individual levels of maturity on safety and by either working with their direct line manager or working directly with the person we can help identify key performance criteria which needs to be built into their CPD program, then we work with you to identify the right service provider or technique in order to start the initial implementation of the program. Follow up coaching sessions help evaluate the learning and question how this can become one of the essential features on how they can use this on a regular basis.
The follow-up on training & coaching programs is paramount in order to ensure that expectations have been met and the initial increase in knowledge can be turned into tangible actions and subsequent results for your organization. By capturing the feedback early with regards the key points learnt from the experience we can assign the tasks and timeframes with regards to when the new knowledge can be put into action and how it will be utilised. Often during this stage people possessing less maturity in safety will struggle to transmit this and it can result in the technique or knowledge being quickly forgotten or not utilised at all.
Essentially though our professional development programs we need to develop and embed safety habits which become one of the core values of the personnel involved, which remains integral for the remainder of their career. For the safety habit to be created it must become part of the routine and be linked to obvious ‘rewards’ or obvious benefits from carrying it out.
Through regular monitoring discussions through either line management personnel or a safety coach, personnel soon become aware of the benefits of a good sustainable professional development program.
It is not just about sending people on more and more training courses, there are other essential learning methods which can help them gain increased professional development in new areas and techniques. At Safety Coaching we ensure to build a professional development program which is blend of a variety of different approaches which can be tailored against peoples different learning styles – visual (seeing) audiometry (listening) and Kinesthetic (feeling)
If you wish to build a lasting safety legacy within your organization it is essential you consider planning in relation to how you will build and sustain the desired competency in safety at all levels. By using Safety Coaching to help you review current competency levels, build specific programs either by role or individually and help you review the benefits you can start to significantly improve your safety performance and the capability of your team to help others achieve results.
In our experience there is no single activity which can help transform an organisations safety culture, developing a safety culture relies on a series of activities, which carried out regularly and effectively become safety habits within your organisation, leading to a sustainable safety culture.
Safety Coaching can assist you in developing a range of tools and processes to help you build your organisational safety culture.
A word of caution which must be provided before you attempt to transform your culture – the activities and place you need to start depends totally on your current level of maturity on safety, some organisations unfortunately move too quickly carrying out activities too early resulting in systems and processes not being fully embedded leading to significant medium and long term problems, which take a significant amount of time to recover.
There are a number of ways safety coaching can help you start to build or enhance your safety culture. The first activity we normally perform is to evaluate your current level of safety culture, this is achieved by observing working practices and discussing with key members how safety is managed within the business. Alternatively, you may know exactly where your safety culture is and may only require assistance in one particular area
Here are some of the example activities in creating a safety culture where Safety Coaching can help:
How your company plans, delivers and monitors the resources allocated to improvement programs, either through dedicated internal quality resources, such as H&S team or through training and development schemes for all levels of the workforce. It is essential resources are allocated and reviewed regularly to make sure expectations are being met
How the company, its leadership and people involved in the running the business engage and involve the employee and contractor communities, in order so they fully understand the key messages, listen and react appropriately to any feedback provided and actively seek to involve the workforce on a daily basis in effective ways to eliminate and manage the risks they are exposed to
How the leaders of the business consistently demonstrate their commitment, through their own visibility and behaviours, planning to adequately manage new and future risks, make sound judgements in relation to business activities taking safety as an essential component within business improvement areas, how leaders provide positive reinforcement to others to promote a fair and just safety culture
How the behaviours of the workforce are monitored, through positive discussions where good standards of behaviour are observed. Addressing unsafe behaviours of individuals or teams, to understand what could be going wrong without the creation of a blame culture. Safety Coaching can assist in behavioural safety coaching discussions and observations, along with lagging and leading indicators to monitor performance
How the management system elements are created to meet the current and future risk levels of the business, how the information is transmitted to relevant members of the workforce, along with how you can monitor what is working well and what could be in need of further enhancement
How trust is developed with the workforce to allow open and transparent interactions regards safety performance, the effect of poor or decreasing levels of trust can have on the short and medium term safety culture
How to promote the reporting of work-related incidents and follow-up with comprehensive incident investigations to identify root causation and remedial measures. How simple techniques such as question phrasing and observation can play an integral role in completing the investigation. How performance monitoring techniques and leading indicators can help with prediction and management, how Senior Management behaviour in relation to involvement in incidents can have a dramatic effect
How proactive performance measures can be used to challenge leaders and how different techniques can be utilised for those with a lower level of safety performance, different techniques which can be involved in personal monitoring at different levels
How different techniques can be used to actively deliver communications regards personnels role and specific responsibilities in relation to safety performance, how to evaluate performance levels agreed agreed responsibilities and set targets for improvements, how to question personnel regards their performance and provide positive feedback with regards to potential improvement areas
Do you know your current safety culture? what is working well and what specific areas need further enhancement, these areas should form a fundamental part of your health and safety improvement plan?
We can help in a number of areas, through our experience of working with a range of different safety cultures and maturities we can identify you current position and how to further enhance your culture by tailoring your current approach to drive more value for all.
Over the last 20 years we have worked with hundreds of safety professionals in a variety of different environments, one fact is this – if you want to improve your safety performance you have to have the right people to fit with your organizational maturity on safety and the right people in order to influence key decision makers.
Many organisations struggle to place the right person in the position due to a number of factors , getting the wrong person can significantly stall your safety improvement plan and in some instances can set it back a number of years, here are some of the common problems organisations experience during the recruitment of a good safety professional:
People are normally selected solely on technical skill in safety, rather than a combination of technical capability and interpersonal skill to influence key decision makers and drive performance
Lack of planning or understanding on the key fundamentals of the role in order to provoke change – good job specifications and person profiles are essential
Think differently through the recruitment process and concentrate on previous experience with associated organisations from the same sector, rather than what the person can actually achieve for your company
Personnel selected are not provided with clear instructions and mentoring with regards to what is required to gain the required shift in safety performance
No development plans are placed to challenge individuals to continually improve, some believe this is nice comfortable, ‘easy’ role which will suit them until their retirement comes around!
We can help you search, select, interview and place the right person for your organisation. If required we can also assist with their long term development in order to make a lasting sustainable difference to both your teams and your safety culture.
Safety Coaching can help you within all aspects of your recruitment and selection of a first class safety professional who can help you change and become a key trusted member of your senior management team and decision strategy.