Building a top-grade safety culture for your construction company does not happen overnight. Changing some aspects of your company requires a top-down approach from your people to your operations. For instance, “Safety First” cannot be simply lip service delivered to your people. Instead, it should be put into practice by successfully building a robust safety culture within your company.
Your commitment to safety must be one of the central principles of your company’s culture. In this blog, we will share with you some practical and actionable ways to heighten your company’s safety culture and how construction software tools can help you in your ongoing efforts.
Why Should Safety Be Your Top Priority?
Simple. Safety on the job site is critical in protecting your workers and the public and keeping the job running on time. It does make sense to put job site safety above everything else – productivity, costs, timelines, etc. Remember also that your people are your number one asset. So, it is your obligation to prove to them that you prioritize their safety. Your concern towards them builds trust and instills confidence.
In addition, putting safety first gives you a lot of advantages. It improves productivity, reduces costs, and, most especially, prevents accidents on site. Accidents may lead to project delays and cost overruns. And no business leader or project manager ever wants that to happen.
So, by creating a culture of safety in your company, there is a guarantee of protection for yourself, your people, and your clients from any possible risks.
Boost Your Safety Culture with These Tips
1. More and More Training for your Workers
Training your workers is one of the easiest ways to help level up your company’s safety culture. It also shows your commitment and dedication to keeping your people safe, healthy and away from possible accidents. When it comes to training, it should not be a one-off event, and training on safety must be a continuous effort to help strengthen best practices. Ongoing training can help your construction crew significantly retain what they have been taught – keeping safety practices on the top of their minds.
2. Get Your Workers More Involved and Invested
One of the best suggestions we have for you is to put together a committee. This should include all your employees and people from all levels of your company. As much as possible, allow every single one of them to contribute. They should be participating in the assessment and updating of your company’s safety program.
Do also your part. You may start working on the following approaches:
- You can craft job-site-specific safety plans during the initial phase and help determine safety concerns and potential hazards.
- Create a corrective and comprehensive action plan with your employee inputs.
- Ensure that all your people are aware of these plans to have it all properly enforced and executed.
- Assemble an accident response team for every job site comprised of a few employees who have some basic first aid training. Make sure these people know what necessary steps to take in the event an accident occurs to reduce any existing hazards.
Workers and crew members who are personally involved in building and reinforcing your safety culture will feel more motivated and invested and are most likely to take safety seriously. On top of that, they will be most likely participative and foster consistent communication to talk about their concerns and share inputs with others.
3. Hold everybody accountable
Everyone who steps foot on the construction job site is accountable for safety. Your crew members have to know that unsafe actions and practices will put them in danger, especially the people around them. As the project leader, you must ensure that safety rules are defined clearly.
Give the latest updates and share announcements with the use of SOFTWARE. Communication is seamless and collaboration is made easier with this tool deployed in the workflow. This empowers your workers to speak up and report any unsafe conditions or coworkers failing to follow basic safety protocols.
Everyone onsite must have the power to address and fix any safety issues. And only the proper supervision and training of your employees with the right software tool can make it possible.
4. Reward the Good, Correct the Bad
It is best to reward your workers, especially when they follow all safety rules intently. We suggest you use incentives to reward your people for attending meetings, adhering to safe working practices, reporting near misses, wearing personal protective equipment, and making suggestions to enhance overall safety.
Motivating and rewarding your workers for their proactive approach to safety could result in fewer injuries and accidents.
5. Conduct safety meetings and daily site inspections
The job site has to be inspected before and after every working day to address safety concerns. The job site must also be inspected throughout the day to determine any possible hazards and monitor workers to ensure they are working safely.
Six Ways Construction Software Tool Can Boost your Safety Performance
Many construction companies today are switching from paper-based safety methods to software solution tools. There is more to going paperless compared to less paperwork. The many benefits of enhancing safety performance using top-notch software like Pro Crew Schedule extend well beyond your worksite and organization.
Check what Pro Crew Schedule can offer to you:
1. It demonstrates a commitment
Deploying construction software platforms prove a business and its leadership agenda to be committed to improving safety. If your company decides to deploy the latest software solutions, you are further demonstrating and verifying your focus on continuous improvement. This directly impacts your safety culture and other aspects of your construction company, whether your construction equipment management or your inventory.
2. Instant oversights from anywhere
Using project management systems as part of your company’s safety approach gives your team instant oversight of all your onsite safety processes anytime and anywhere. As part of your company’s commitment to continuous improvement, audits are being carried out regularly. This is to confirm that your construction site team can address all essential workplace safety requirements and indicators.
3. Faster Issue Resolution
Whenever you find out about any issue, you can immediately know it. You no longer have to go office, send emails and resolve the issue. This construction management software enables you to quickly log an incident and designate it for immediate action while onsite.
If there is a situation, you can also take photos and post them on the platform. Instantly, your crew members can easily see the posts. Before you know it, there is already a quick response time for such issues, and problems are closed out that fast.
4. Improved Collaboration and Teamwork
This project management software can enhance collaboration. This is because you and your team can constantly communicate on this all-in-one platform. More than that, it helps your team to be more aware of their obligations for their safety.
On top of that, there is also a guaranteed construction management improvement upon deploying this tool. In addition, there are also more significant insights you can gather, such as insights about safety issues, near misses, incidents, and risky behaviors.
5. Clear procedures and policies
Even the most comprehensive safety approach will not have a massive impact if it is not communicated across your company. Only construction automation tools provide a central, seamlessly accessible hub for all your company safety updates. While it is still crucial to communicate a lot of changes during meetings, the online environment that this software offers can make it even more seamless, bringing everyone together at speed.
6. Efficient Job Safety Analyses
Project management solutions streamline the tedious but critical process of your job safety analyses. And given the resources and time this analysis required, you do not know that many companies prefer to de-prioritize them. Unsurprisingly, updates are only done a few times after a couple of years, which is very alarming.
That is why we always suggest you digitize the process using the latest project management solution. You and your team can perfectly carry out your analysis with more speed and efficiency. You will always be at the top of the schedule too.
Improve Your Safety Programs with Pro Crew Schedule
We have already cited the top benefits of using this excellent software solution. Now, you ought to know the leading construction management software today, and it is none other than Pro Crew Schedule.
It has proven to be the best in the software market, and it plays a major role in many improvements for construction firms. From documentation, tracking, and communication to training, this cutting-edge software effectively facilitates all of the crucial processes of your well-established safety programs. We hope you read everything right from the top.
If you wish to learn more about the many trends in construction management and experience all of the benefits Pro Crew Schedule can offer, get started with your free trial.
Key Takeaways
Good or bad, your construction company already has a safety culture, but there is always room for improvement. The need to commit and exert continuous effort is necessary to have a rock-solid safety culture. Establishing procedures and programs that strengthen that commitment takes a lot of time, adjustments to improve, and employee engagement.
