How your Workers can become Safety Champions

Ok Alone have recently introduced their new Safety Awards program. But how do you get your employees to become Safety Champions?

What is Safety Culture?

Many companies talk about ‘safety culture’ when referring to the tendency of their employees to follow rules or act safety or unsafely. But what is safety culture?

“The safety culture of an organisation is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management.” ¹

A positive safety culture within a company is vital to having a successful Health and Safety program. Managers must lead by example making sure they follow all safety policies and ensuring workers do the same. Managers must motivate their workforce to think and act safely by encouraging worker involvement and collaboration, developing relationships and supporting their workforce. They need to regularly promote the significance of ownership of actions and foster a sense of belonging amongst staff.

How Ok Alone is trying to improve the Safety Culture

Ok Alone investigated staff/worker engagement with lone worker solutions and as a result developed Safety Awards, an engaging way to help workers stay safe, while using their lone worker system. It allows workers to log their safe practises and compete with colleagues and companies across the world.

How do the Safety Awards Help?

1. Every month each worker’s Ok Alone activity is reviewed, and they are awarded a number of badges for features used and milestones reached.
2. A score out of 100 is awarded to each worker. This takes into account a number of safety factors including missed check ins, location monitoring, start shift and check in reminders.  
3. Workers are then able to compare their ranking in relation to other workers in their company, their country and around the world.

How do Lone Workers become Safety Champions?

In order for workers to increase their ranking and become a Safety Champion they need to

• check in on time with no reminder alerts
• have accurate and frequent GPS location updates
• start shifts on time
• use the Man Down or high risk features as well as other features

Workers are not penalised for using the ‘help/panic’ button. Through using the system and having safe work practices, workers are encouraged to maintain their good results, (the motivation to have a better score than Jim on the opposite shift also helps).

Using Safety Awards for Lone Worker Motivation

Employees being actively involved in their own safety will have a much bigger impact on the overall safety culture of a company, compared to the passive approach of employees letting it wash over them. Having the ability to say you are number one in the world amongst the global community using the OK Alone lone worker system, is also quite a motivator.

1. ACSNI Human Factors Study Group: Third report – Organising for safety HSE Books 1993