Six steps to building a solid safety value proposition

Engagement is one of the key challenges that safety teams experience, with recent research finding that it is one of the weakest pillars of the safety experience for workers.

The engagement challenge is twofold when it comes to safety – particularly in high-risk industries like mining, manufacturing, construction, utilities and logistics, said Jess Daly, chief strategy officer for professional services firm Everyday Massive.

“It’s both getting the frontline engagement and cut-through with safety initiatives and programs, but it’s also ensuring the safety team and safety leaders, more specifically, can engage and influence the broader organisation,” she said.

Everyday Massive recently conducted research with more than 400 people working in high-risk industries in Australia, and the research found that engagement is one of the weakest of the five pillars that make up the safety experience for workers.

“While Australian workplaces are great at encouraging workers to report safety incidents, where things fall away is in empowering teams to actively promote safety, having regular opportunities for workers to participate in safety discussions, and then ensuring safety suggestions from workers are implemented,” said Daly, who will be presenting a workshop on crafting safety engagement strategies together with Everyday Massive Founder Jen Jackson and COO Jessica Radnidge at the AIHS National Health and Safety Conference 2024, which will be held at the Melbourne Convention Centre from 21-23 May.

“Working with great safety leaders has shown us that safety broadly has a key person risk problem. We have seen amazing leaders who are individually fantastic at engagement, but when they leave an organisation, things tend to stall and that great engagement doesn’t scale.”

Daly observed that losing top safety talent means losing momentum on safety performance and engagement, which often has a bottom-line impact on business performance. 

It can also be a challenge for safety leaders to influence beyond their level to the broader organisation. 

“So the question we often return to is how do you assure against this with safety and wellbeing engagement that’s far-reaching and impactful,” according to Daly, who said this leads to a second common challenge, which is programs, initiatives and training that just don’t cut through or engage.

“Whether it’s safety training that’s done like sheep dipping, where everyone does the same training regardless of its relevancy, or safety communication that’s dull and overly corporate – it’s dangerous not to set safety expectations, but it’s just as dangerous to have safety communication that doesn’t connect,” she said.

Everyday Massive is currently partnering with three big Australian organisations to develop their Safety Value Proposition (SVP), which Daly said is the “safety operating system and the safety promise that will transform organisational safety and wellbeing into a core business strategy that will exist beyond any single safety leader. 

“By elevating safety and wellbeing to a core organisational pillar, we’re making sure it’s integrated into every program, initiative and process,” she said.

“Once that safety promise and the associated commitments are articulated, it becomes the north star for safety and wellbeing. And that’s exciting because it will help shift the felt experience of safety so it’s consistent across the organisation, across the employee lifecycle and across the moments that matter for safety.”

An effective safety promise not only communicates the organisation’s dedication to protecting its workforce but also integrates safety and wellbeing into the culture and operational practices, said Daly.

“This alignment highlights safety as a core organisational value, which can in turn enhance employee engagement, reduce workplace incidents, reduce environmental impact and improve overall organisational performance,” said Daly, who broke down the development of an SVP into six steps:

1. Discover the current state through an audit of existing safety practices and policies, looking for gaps, opportunities, and strengths.
2. Define safety promise principles, commitments, and promises, based on insights gathered during the discovery phase.
3. Develop your safety promise toolkit, which focuses on creating the necessary tools and resources that support the application of the defined promise commitments.
4. Deliver engagement, training, and communication to make sure the promise is understood and embraced across the organisation.
5. Deliver strategic integration of the promise across all safety-related initiatives and programs.
6. Deliver embedding and measurement to make the promise an integral part of daily operations through reward and recognition and measuring effectiveness.

Daly will present a workshop together with Everyday Massive Founder Jen Jackson and COO Jessica Radnidge at the AIHS National Health and Safety Conference 2024, to be held at the Melbourne Convention Centre from 21-23 May. The conference will offer three days of workshops, presentations, keynote speeches, networking events and a conference dinner. Delegates will have the opportunity to learn from their peers, share knowledge and grow their professional networks. For more information, email [email protected], call (03) 8336 1995 or visit the event website.