Recommendations for Bruno Small Goods towards Improving Safety Culture

Question: Discuss about the Recommendations for Bruno Small Goods towards Improving Safety Culture. Answer: Recruitment and Job Design As a preventive measure at initial stages, recruitment and job design can help towards the improvement of safety culture and the prevention of the aftermath injuries and illness experienced at the workplace. During recruitment, the Human Resource team of Bruno Small Goods should ensure that the selected candidates can demonstrate commitment towards the organizational safety practices. This can be achieved by including work health and safety questions in the interview and conducting safety psychometric testing. The type of job design and work system and its general management can be a source of work-related injuries. Some elements of job design like workload, rostering, shift work, and the communications relationships and supervision if poorly conducted can cause job-related injuries. Therefore, the organization should consider ergonomics, repetition towards improving safety culture that will minimize any physical injuries. Henning et al. (2013) conducted a research on promotion or pr otection of health using participatory ergonomics and found out that when workers were involved in the creation of job designs the rate of accidents at work reduced because they felt they were part of the work system and therefore would report or advice on any perceived risk. Compensation and performance-based pay Compensation is a legal requirement in the instances where the injury occurred at work. However, research done by Bronchetti and McInerney (2012) shows that compensation can to the contrary promote careless minor work injuries. To counter such a scenario, the management should implement continuous error checking system and establish clear guidelines on the terms and conditions which qualify for compensation. Performance-based pay is another way the company can adapt to improve safety culture. Research done by Ellen et al. (2012) found out that employees that were rewarded based on their performance were much committed to the work and did not need supervision as long as the right tools of work were provided. Also, there were increasing levels of worker safety. Embrace and support of safety culture by line managers first Employee attitude towards safety policies and procedures is considered as the first prevention to work-related injuries (Kapp, 2012). To foster such an attitude in employees, it must begin with the commitment of managers through their support and promotion of the safety policies and procedures. The management can be encouraged to embrace and promote the safety policies through performance based-pay and continuous training on the significance of safety organizational culture. Such a commitment will help discourage the normalization of defiance. Without the support from those expected to enforce safety, staff will find no motivation to adhere to safety policies and procedures. The study by (Kapp, 2012) revealed that the support of management is critical industrial setups. The results of the research showed that the safety climate of employees at the workplace improved based on the attitude and practices of the leadership, also, in such scenario, the employees were compliant with the es tablished safety policies. Endorse error checking The supervisors should be tasked to check for errors on a routine basis to avoid or mitigate the consequences of those errors before they advance to serious injuries (Spath, 2011). Based on the Spath review of case studies in the medical field, error checking will establish a continuous learning climate which will serve as a lesson to employees to learn from their previous mistakes and not cover them up. Such an environment of learning will avoid the punitive climate of blaming and pointing fingers to those who err Schultz and Schultz (2015) and instead it will focus on the investigation of the cause of the error after which the entire organization will be able to gain a lesson from it. Promote teamwork Bruno Small Goods Company just like other agencies is dependent on the team of staff to accomplish the objective of improving safety culture. For example, the medical society encourages teamwork as a tool for improving safety during work (Thomas and Galla, 2013). Collaboration features specific activities that the team does (flexible and adaptive behaviors), the thoughts of the members (cognitions), and feelings of the team members (attitudes) Salas Cannon-Bowers, 2001). The organization should encourage its staff to work cooperatively through interaction and synchronizing at the level of the various teams. The coordinated teamwork demands the merging of processes, approaches, and activities that permits the participants to work interdependently. Studies were done by Dollard et al., (2012) in Australia showed that the competencies acquired through teamwork would logically improve safety culture in the organization. References Bronchetti, E.T. and McInerney, M., 2012. Revisiting Incentive Effects in Workers' Compensation: Do Higher Benefits Really Induce More Claims?.ILR Review,65(2), pp.286-315. Dollard, M.F., Bailey, T., McLinton, S., Richards, P., McTernan, W., Taylor, A. and Bond, S., 2012.The Australian Workplace Barometer: Report on psychosocial safety climate and worker health in Australia. Centre for Applied Psychological Research, University of South Australia. Accessed on 4 October 2017 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarven_Mclinton/publication/272169998_The_Australian_Workplace_Barometer_Report_on_Psychosocial_Safety_Climate_and_Worker_Health_in_Australia/links/54dd3c4e0cf25b09b912f28e/The-Australian-Workplace-Barometer-Report-on-Psychosocial-Safety-Climate-and-Worker-Health-in-Australia.pdf Ellen, M., Lippel, K., Ron, S., Agnieszka, K., Liz, M., Carrasco, C. and Pugliese, D., 2012. Workers compensation experience-rating rules and the danger to workers safety in the temporary work agency sector.Policy and Practice in Health and Safety,10(1), pp.77-95. Henning, R.A., Reeves, D.W. and CPH-NEW Research Team, 2013. An integrated health protection/promotion program supporting participatory ergonomics and salutogenic approaches in the design of workplace interventions. InSalutogenic organizations and change(pp. 307-325). Springer Netherlands. Kapp, E.A., 2012. The influence of supervisor leadership practices and perceived group safety climate on employee safety performance.Safety science,50(4), pp.1119-1124. Accessed on 4 October 2017 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E_Andrew_Kapp/publication/257356413_The_influence_of_supervisor_leadership_practices_and_perceived_group_safety_climate_on_employee_safety_performance/links/574d773e08ae061b33031847/The-influence-of-supervisor-leadership-practices-and-perceived-group-safety-climate-on-employee-safety-performance.pdf Schultz, D. and Schultz, S.E., 2015.Psychology and work today 10E. Routledge. Spath, P.L. ed., 2011.Error reduction in health care: A systems approach to improving patient safety. John Wiley Sons. Thomas, L. and Galla, C., 2013. Building a culture of safety through team training and engagement.BMJ Qual Saf,22(5), pp.425-434. Accessed on 4 October 2017. https://bezpiecznypacjent.cmj.org.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/010-Budowanie-kultury-bezpiecze%C5%84stwa.pdf