Effective safety leadership is critical for any organization looking to ensure the well-being of their employees. But being a great safety leader means more than just enforcing the rules – it also means caring about the team and demonstrating safety values through your actions as a leader.
Let’s take a look at how effective safety leadership can result in a more productive and supportive workplace.
What is Safety Leadership?
Safety leadership is an indispensable skill for any leader in the workplace, but especially in manufacturing, construction, and industrial environments where hazards abound.
Safety leadership ensures that all employees are working safely and that safety procedures are being followed in accordance with an organization’s business or safety strategy. Safety leaders must also be able to:
- Create a culture of safety in the workplace
- Motivate their team to prioritize safety
- Take corrective action when necessary
Safety leadership also involves emotional intelligence and creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable speaking up about potential hazards and actively participating in making sure those hazards are addressed.
When used correctly, safety leadership can be a transformative philosophy that dramatically reduces the incidence of workplace accidents, boosts employee morale, and drives productivity.
After all, machinery and equipment can always be replaced, but there’s absolutely no replacement for human life.
Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership
When it comes to safety leadership, there are two main approaches—transactional leadership and transformational leadership.
Transactional leaders focus on compliance with rules and regulations. This performance management style tends to enforce safety through rules and procedures and uses rewards and recognition to ensure that team members follow the rules. This type of leadership depends on following established workflow processes and actively diagnosing and solving safety problems as they arise.
On the other hand, transformational leaders strive to give employees the tools to develop their own solutions to make their work safer.
Transformational leaders take a proactive approach to leadership by engaging employees in conversations about how they can improve their own safety practices. Transformational leaders focus on building relationships with their teams through cooperation and communication, so they can better understand each individual’s needs when it comes to safety.
When it comes to leadership style, what works best for one organization might not necessarily work for another. In fact, in most modern workplaces, a hybrid of leadership styles is best.
An effective safety leader in particular requires a combination of both transformational and transactional leadership skills to be successful.
A combination leadership style can ensure a balance between measuring employee safety performance in meeting compliance standards (transactional leadership) and creating a culture of safety in which team members collaborate to solve safety problems (transformational leadership.)
10 Safety Leadership Competencies
Whether leaders take a transactional or transformational approach, there’s no one size fits all solution for safety leadership success. However, there are some crucial skills that all great safety leaders use to make a difference in the workplace.
1) Supporting
A good leader should provide support for their team members when it comes to health and safety issues. This includes a commitment to constantly monitor decisions and actions made on the shop floor and ensure compliance with safety standards. Support also means providing resources such as training materials or access to help employees stay safe at work.
2) Recognizing
Leaders should recognize employees who demonstrate safety habits at work. This could be done through verbal recognition or even awards or prizes for exemplary behavior related to health and safety issues. Rewarding employees for their safety performance can reduce the odds that other employees will develop bad habits when it comes to safety.
3) Commitment To Safety
A good leader leads by example. Great safety leaders should demonstrate a clear commitment to prioritizing health and safety by practicing workplace safety standards and holding themselves accountable to meet safety requirements.
4) Questioning
Simply asking the right questions at the right time can help to ensure that all processes are running smoothly and the proper safety controls are in place in the event of an emergency. Asking team members direct questions in a positive tone is an easy way to keep tabs on compliance with safety protocols while creating a human connection.
5) Listening
Great leaders are great listeners. Leaders should foster an environment in which team members feel comfortable speaking up about potential risks in the workplace and know that leadership will listen to them. By actively listening to employee concerns, leaders not only connect with their team on a personal level, but they can help ensure that any potential hazards are identified early on before they become serious problems.
6) Collaborating
An effective leader knows that nobody accomplishes anything alone. Safety leaders need to know how to work well with their team members, encourage cooperation, and seek feedback in order to properly address safety issues.
7) Sharing A Vision
Having a vision of safety excellence is essential for effective safety leadership. High performance leaders need to visualize what a safe workplace looks like and motivate employees towards achieving safety goals together rather than just feeling like they have been handed down orders from above without any meaning or purpose behind them.
8) Accountability
Safety leadership means fostering a sense of accountability for every worker throughout the organization. But workplace safety performance isn’t the personal responsibility of team members alone. Leaders must hold themselves accountable for upholding safety standards and be honest with themselves about the quality of their efforts.
9) Standard Setting
Good leaders set standards for how team members should behave when it comes to workplace safety matters. Safety standards help ensure everyone has a deep understanding of what is expected of them.
10) Challenging
Finally, effective leaders challenge themselves and their teams to constantly improve safety in the workplace. Great leaders find new ways to create the safest possible work environment -whether through technology, training, process improvements, or otherwise. By continuously monitoring safety performance, leaders can adjust their business or safety strategy based on successes or shortcomings.
Is safety leadership important for your organization? Are you looking for one safety company that can do it all? Trust the Amerisafe advantage.
At Amerisafe Group, we proudly provide quality safety consulting and occupational health services for clients in a wide variety of industries, from oil and gas to industrial manufacturing and beyond.
Whether your organization needs OSHA compliance training, professional site safety consulting, or even confined space rescue and training, Amerisafe Group has the solution for you. We’ve built our reputation through decades of exceptional service, and we’re ready to tackle any health and safety project for your business, no matter the size.
