How Small Steps Lead to Safer Construction

First, a few questions:

How do we all view Health and Safety? Somebody else’s responsibility? A set of processes that have be followed and forms that have to be filled in? Or something more fundamental?

And whose safety are we talking about? A nameless, faceless person? Or ourselves, the real people working around us, and the people who will use the things we build?

And can any of us say that we are working in a 100% safe way? That we pose zero risk to ourselves and our colleagues?

That last question is the critical one for two reasons. First, it places responsibility on all of us to question what we do and what we see going on around us. We all need to be in the habit of asking; ‘is this the safest way to do this? We all need to be confident about calling out unsafe practices and risky shortcuts when we see them.

How would you feel if you chose not to speak up and something horrible happened?

The second big implication is that the safety journey is never complete. There are always small steps we can take to make ourselves and our colleagues safer.

Decisions and Choices

Safety is about the mindset we bring to work with us each day. Often we are our own biggest risk. Safety frequently comes down to a choice and a decision at a point in time. Decisions we make several times every day.

Osborne’s STOP Think! Programme and bulletins are part of a cultural shift. ‘Near misses’ are no longer things that we don’t want to talk about; they are part of a learning process. Initiatives and ideas that help everyone work more safely are shared and celebrated. It’s something we are all a part of.

It makes a real difference when, before just doing something, you stop and think about whether it can be done more safely, or whether it should even be done at all.

Small steps and everyday decisions matter a lot. So here’s one final question: Imagine if everybody did one simple thing every day to make our work safer, what sort of difference would that add up to for all of us?

To find out more about Osborne’s STOP Think! programme, click here.