
- Â Â Â Â Â Â Technology
- Â Â Â Â Â Â Demographics
- Â Â Â Â Â Â Sustainable development and OSH
- Â Â Â Â Â Â Changes in work organization
Technology and Workplace Safety

- Digitalization and ICT,
- Automation and robotics,
- and nanotechnology.
Demographics and Gender
The workplace is continually changing. This won’t alter in the future. Like new developments in technology, these changes will create new worker health and safety challenges and require new regulations and standards. They’ll also place enormous pressure on labor markets and social security systems, unearthing new issues regarding inclusive workplaces. Businesses will have to take on these challenges to create productive safety cultures. Â
Creating Occupational Health and Safety Cultures
Addressing the challenges described in the ILO report will require more than just creating future safety regulations or standards. Full-blown safety cultures need to be created for different business organizations. Below, seven of the proven best practices for building a robust safety culture to deal with future safety challenges are listed.
- Define health/safety responsibilities — This best practice is a critical step that needs to be taken for every level of your organization—not just in Human Resources. Make sure you include policies, goals, and plans for each level.
- Share your safety vision — Creating objectives for each level in the organization is also critical. But, everyone in your organization must be on the same page when it comes to health and safety. Remember to share your corporate vision with all stakeholders.
- Impose and enforce accountability — In a robust health and safety culture, everyone is accountable for health and safety. However, this only occurs when you impose and enforce accountability on all employees; including managers and supervisors. This should deliver positive leadership and drive positive change.
- Offer numerous options — Providing options builds employee confidence along the way, encouraging workers to come forward with any concerns, helping to prevent accidents. Offering multiple ways for employees to bring their health and safety issues full-face is a good start. So is creating a chain of command to ensure that managers and supervisors respond to these issues.
- Report. Report. Report — Employees in an organization with a strong safety culture report all incidents and near misses. Make sure your workers know how important it is to report a near miss. You’ll probably get a surge in the number of reports at first, but that will soon level off.
- Hold regular meetings — Regular safety meetings should be held, either weekly or monthly. Have employees lead the talks to boost worker buy-in. Also, make safety policies and procedures available electronically or in print. Use your Intranet to communicate safety expectations and best practices.
- Provide online training — Providing online safety training shows employees that you’re committed to wellbeing, especially with new employees. A good time to do this is during the onboarding process. Using GoContractor’s solution boosts learning for new employees, creating a safer and more compliant working environment, streamlining and simplifying the onboarding process, while reducing paperwork and costs.
- Lead by example — Remind managers and supervisors that they need to lead by example. If managers and supervisors commit to safety, your employees will do the same thing. Employee buy-in is critical to having a positive safety culture. In safety, you have to walk the walk.
