Creating an effective and positive safety culture is a never-ending but satisfying process. It takes a large commitment on behalf of the entire organisation, but it has great benefits. Here are my 8 top tips to get you started on building a positive and strong safety culture at your organisation:

1. Define safety responsibilities: Do this for each level within your organization. This should include policies, goals and plans for the safety culture.
2. Share your safety vision: Everyone should be in the same boat when establishing goals and objectives for their safety culture.
3. Enforce accountability: Create a process that holds everyone accountable for being visibly involved, especially managers and supervisors. They are the leaders for a positive change.
4. Provide multiple options: Provide different options for employees to bring their concerns or issues. There should be a chain of command to make sure supervisors are held accountable for being responsive.
5. Report, report, report: Educate employees on the importance of reporting injuries, first aids and near misses. Prepare for an increase in incidents if currently there is under-reporting. It will level off eventually.
6. Rebuild the investigation system: Evaluating the incident investigation system is critical to make sure investigations are conducted in an effective manner. This should help get to the root cause of accidents and incidents.
7. Build trust: When things start to change in the workplace, it is important to keep the water calm. Building trust will help everyone work together to see improvements.
8. Celebrate success: Make your efforts public to keep everyone motivated and updated throughout the process.