What is your biggest priority when it comes to your employees? Is it their productivity, their contentment, or is it their safety? Safety, in all of its various forms, has to be adhered to, not just for compliance with the rules and regulations, but it’s beneficial for your employees’ state of mind. Creating a “safe” house of sorts, requires a lot of work, not just for the benefit of your employees, but to ensure that you are complying with all of the various rules in place set by a higher power. And as a working environment needs to be a nurturing one, you need to provide this safety in so many different ways…
The Perspective Of Safety
Let’s address this first, a perspective of operating in a safety conscious manner isn’t just for the benefit of your employees, it’s something that can have a far-reaching impact on your clients, your supply chain, as well as your customers.
The overriding perspective of operating within the rules and regulations is easier nowadays, but yet, some businesses are not working under the appropriate jurisdictions. For example, an item as small as lithium batteries, need to be adhered to in relation to the US DOT as well as the international regulations that have been changed recently.
You can visit this site for more information on this, but for entrepreneurs who are just starting out, certain smaller regulations can very easily slip by the wayside. As entrepreneurs have to spin many plates, can be very easy to let something slip.
If you are seen to be shirking your responsibilities, word will get to your clients and customers, and you won’t make a name for yourself. Reputation is arguably, more important than anything else when you are building a business. Established entrepreneurs know the importance of making a name for yourself, and when the notion of operating under a safety conscious pretense is concerned, local organizations are so hot on regulating these rules, if you are not seen to be following them to the letter, your business could very easily get shut down.
Not just this, but now, customers are choosing who to purchase from based on how the business’s attitudes align with their own. If your company isn’t seen to be operating with a semblance of consciousness, customers will quickly go to a business that does.
In today’s extremely competitive market, how you are seen to be safe is as important as every other aspect.
Emotional Safety
The safety of your organization isn’t just about the perspective from the outside, your employees’ perspective on how you run a business is as important to the entire process as its productivity.
Because your company needs to operate with an ethical mindset, but also a productive one, you will have to consider your overall impact as a leader on the safety of your employees.
Because the business thrives on the results your employees deliver, it’s imperative that you nurture a safe working environment.
While there are numerous safety concerns about any business from a health and safety point of view, encouraging your employees to feel that they are safe in your working environment is a lot harder than you would first think.
Encouraging this sense of emotional safety is a key part of the modern holistic business framework. After all, the way it used to stand, employees would not feel secure enough in the structure to come forward with constructive criticism. This is why you need to consider, in a holistic sense, how your business nurtures its employees so that they can work as effectively as possible, but also feel that they are able to put themselves forward as an active cog in the business wheel.
The working environment in this respect is vital to how they can express themselves. This doesn’t just consist of the important health and safety concerns, if there are policies in place a member of staff can feel they are able to express themselves, but if they have any concerns, they won’t be met with derision. Because your business lives or dies by the strength of its employees, the impact of a safe working environment in an emotional sense is critical. Because your employees require a solid structure in which to thrive, this is all about addressing, not just your employees’ individual approaches to the work and the environment, but embracing a more positive company culture. This is because a culture where your employees can feel able to do they work, but also to engage with each other in a more relaxed manner, is integral to the modern business.
There’s a lot that has been said about millennials and what they require out of a job now, and this is something that we all have to take on board. Millennials, as a rule, look for the working environment where they can thrive, not just a company that has perks and pay. These are sprinklings of icing on the proverbial business cake, but when an employee is looking for a safe environment, it may not just consist of a lucrative workplace pension. So how can you accomplish this? One of the most important things an entrepreneur should embody is leading by example. This is an age-old approach, but it’s still more effective than the antiquated idea of the leader doing one thing, and the employees following orders.
This is not how a modern business should work.
And if you want your employees to feel safe and nurtured in this environment, what you need to do is to get on to the shop floor with them, you need to not just show that you are there with them, you need to be one of the team. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish because you are, in many ways, different.
But when a group of employees is struggling in your business, or they don’t have any faith in you as a leader, this can be very difficult to rectify.
A Safe Structure
Creating a working environment that is safe for your employees, clients, and anybody else involved is essential. But, while it’s so easy to communicate, and while there are so many different rules and regulations to follow, how you can be sure you’re doing everything right? You can follow the example of other organizations that have come before you, even by obtaining advice from mentors or other business leaders, or it can be something that you can feel your way through.
But regardless of how you approach the problem, creating a safe structure isn’t just following the OSHA rules and regulations, it is about the tangible feeling, inside and out, of the company as a whole. This safe structure is something that can be achieved with comprehensive rules and regulations, working at establishing a holistic structure, one that is easily compliable but also encourages your employees to have a sense of freedom, it can take a long time to get right. The way it used to be, rules and regulations with there to be followed to the letter, without deviation. But now, we can struggle with strict, enforced rules, and this can provide a very precarious approach to how your business works effectively.
But, all in all, this is down to you, and how you lead. It’s not just the safe environment that will encourage employees to work well; it’s about the structure in place. This is all about ensuring the business processes are as neat as possible, with all of the fat trimmed.
But, you should consider this in every aspect, because not only does it make for a better working environment, it’s going to save you a lot of hassle, time, and, more importantly, money. And so, when you are implementing a structure of sorts, even when you are starting out, or you’ve been well established for some time, if your employees don’t feel safe or secure in the knowledge that you are doing a job that is benefiting the entire organization, this is going to be your downfall.
Nowadays, employees feel that their jobs aren’t safe or secure, because of so many problems, either in the economy or within specific organizational procedures. Every business feels the pinch now, it can be very difficult to communicate to employees that they are safe and secure with you. But, if you can’t promise this, you still need to ensure that the environment they are in is part of a tangible, secure structure, and will encourage positivity.
Safety is such a concern, it can be easy just to pay lip service to this approach, but, the fact of the matter is, it’s not just ensuring that hard hats are worn, or the environment is safe to work in, safety is a feeling that your employees can benefit from. And while it may take some time to get right, once you have this in place, either through your business ethos, the image you present, or how you work with your employees, a working environment that is safe in so many different respect is something that will compound itself in a positive manner. This will work for you infinitely.