MGT2HRM Bruno Smallgoods Online Tutoring

Report on safety culture and safety work practices at Bruno Smallgoods

Executive Summary

Bruno Smallgoods is facing a management crisis, where they are concerned about the non-compliance of work health and safety practices at their site of operations. Their higher management is committed and responsible towards positive safety culture, however the frontline workers are not committed to this culture and it concerns the organization as it might end up in fatal injury or death of any of the worker at plant. This concerns the employer because primarily it is dangerous for the workers to work with an attitude that might put their own lives in jeopardy, and secondly because it will bring in the bad name for the firm and they will end up being involved in a lawsuit. In order to avoid any of these anticipated events , Bruno Smallgoods requires to strategize their human resource policies by incorporating new methods of recruitment and selection , training and development, rewards and compensations and transforming their workplace for better and easier compliance of workplace safety practices. These activities might not pose to be effective in isolation but rather an integrated approach is required so that the idea is reinforced effectively and workforce realize that safety is as important of an objective as any other objective for the management.

Introduction

Human Resource Management is one of the foremost function for any type of organization. This can be said because the greatest asset for any business is their human resource. The main role of human resource management it to ensure a good relation between employer and employees. However, it is not easy to define what is good as it might turnout be subjective in nature. The good relation for employer might be different from good relation for employee. Human resource management ensure to align their perspective so that harmonious culture prevail in the organization. Culture for organizations simply means the overall norms and shared common value to which all the employees are committed and are determined to comply with (Bugalia et al, 2019). The overall organizational culture are made up of subsets of various cultures. For instance, concern of safety and health should be a common priority for everyone in the organization and hence safety culture is a culture that define shared and common values and priorities about safe workplace practices. Sometimes there can be a discrepancy about importance of safety culture between employer and employees and in such cases human resource management play an important role in mitigating this discrepancy and align positive safety culture at all levels of organization, by using different tools and techniques (Clay William et al, 2020).

Legal responsibilities about safety that employers have to ensure at their workplace

Employer’s foremost responsibility is to provide and sustain safe working conditions and environment, which can be practiced and adapted reasonably. These provisions for safety primarily include availability and maintenance of safe equipment and plants. Additionally it is imperative to provide work systems, which ensures safety. These systems may include limited and relevant access to high-risk zones at workplace and strict compliance of SOPs, which ensure prevention from hazards. For instance, limited access to cutting and mincing plants and compliance of wearing personal protective equipment at all times, during operations etc. Additionally the infrastructure and work layout should support safe practices, such as clear passage of fire and emergency exits, proper ventilation system and general cleanliness of overall premises etc. Furthermore necessary training, supervision and set of instructions must be provided to all the employees, enabling them to work in a safer and healthier environment (“Occupational Health and Safety Act and Regulations,” 2020).
Government also elaborates on what is “reasonably practicable.” According to “Occupational Health and Safety Act and Regulations” (2020), if any knowledge of likelihood or occurrence of harm due to possible hazard, availability of means to avoid or mitigate such hazards, and the cost of implementing the safety measures are known, then these measures are reasonably practicable and therefore comes under employer’s responsibility to implement them and make their compliance effective.
Apart from these responsibilities, employers must also ensure management and removal of any asbestos or other residual toxins that might cause health concerns. Lastly in few cases where operations or equipment are of nature, which make workers increasingly vulnerable to the hazardous conditions, employers might require license or permit to conduct such activities or operate such plants and equipment.

Defining the term ‘safety culture’

Organization wide conceptualization of safety culture is important for its effective implementation. Although safety culture is defined in similar aspects throughout initial literature, however keeping the current problem in perspective, the elaboration of safety culture by UK Health and Safety Commission seems highly relevant. They define it as a result of competencies, values and behavioral patterns that determine commitment towards health and safety programs. It further defines that strong safety cultures are reflected through communications originated from mutual trust. This trust is based on realization of importance of safety, and having confidence in the effectiveness of preventive measures. In contrast, current literature refers safety culture as a subset of safety climate. Safety climate dictates a macro perspective where it includes industry, government and nation as a whole, in addition to organizations’ internal values and practices. The underlying rational is that employees switch jobs, usually in similar industry, therefore they bring some aspect of their previous cultures and might influence the existing culture to an extent, therefore over some time amalgamation of multiple safety cultures has evolved to at least industry-wide safety climate (Stemn et al, 2009). This brings in a challenge, where it will be even more challenging to modify safety behaviour if safety climate is predominant and reflects weak safety culture throughout industry and vice-versa (Petitta, et al, 2017). However, it also brings in an opportunity where organizations can set a precedence in term of safety culture by overriding the safety climate, only if climate pose threat to safe work practices. According to Aburumman et.al, (2017) individual process is also important as it makes up the social process, in the first place. It includes sense making (of the overall safety arrangements), motivation through expected actions, empowerment to practice these actions, self-determination and most importantly the social exchange among employees. This as a result decides organizational outcomes related to compliance of safe practices along with productivity and innovation. It is also important to note that with increasing competitive setting, businesses and employer’s needs transformation in safety cultures to keep productivity and innovation intact, which were previously considered to be compromised at the cost of stricter safety compliance (Griffin et al, 2015).

How a safety culture can improve safety behaviors of employees

The law is involved in workplace safety, to ensure the wellbeing of employees; therefore, it is a legal obligation for employers to inculcate safety behavior through positive safety culture, being practiced, at all tiers across organization. Employers and employees are equally important in ensuring safety and health for each other and for the compliance of safety culture. However, it is commonly observed that all types of organization’s cultures are better complied at higher tiers, than on lower tiers of organization. For safety, culture this type of discrepancy between tiers might exist because at lower tiers the operations are being conducted under rigorous conditions while higher in the chain of command practice is under moderate setting. Nonetheless, it is essential to modify safety behaviors to abide by the laws and more importantly to ensure safety of the employees. The ways in which safety culture can ensure active safety behavior are discussed below:

• Safety culture is not only set of shared values, but also a framework that assist organization to start movement towards workplace safety. It helps organization in creation of goals, state these goals in black and white, communicate them to the employees and then measure results post-implementation. It means that safety culture can be used as a formal method to induce safety behavior in workforce. Not only that but it can also be used to monitor compliance and need of improvisation, if results are not achieved (Mei et al, 2017).
• It is common that at workplace, with complex working environment, safety behavior usually breakdown. However, if the organization has a recurring propagation of safety culture, it leaves a lasting impression on the workforce. Gradually, importance of safety behavior prevails , workforce eventually start complying with the culture , as they witness employer attaching greater value to it (Kim, 2019).
  When employer clearly establish the safety culture at workplace, they make it evident that among the competing priorities, safety concern of employees is always on top. Therefore in response to such value, workforce also attach higher value towards safety culture thus adopting safety behaviors. It can also be said that having such culture allows employees to focus better on work having positive safety behavior, as now they do not have to push on profitability and productivity as much as they would have otherwise. (Hofmann et al, 2017)
• A safety culture does not only help in fostering a safe and healthy working environment but it also promote identification of risk zones and ways to improve them for better future operations. This induces safety behavior in a way where, risk can be averted before any fatal injury or accident takes place (Marshall, 2020).
  Safety culture also helps in devising a business-wide communication regarding safety-oriented operations. This sort of communication about safety can further help in enforcing safety behavior and help in risk aversion (Alsabri et al, 2020).
• Additionally safety culture aids in fostering unified vision about safety behavior, which motivates workforce towards safer working practices. More importantly, it helps in accomplishing a condition where entire workforce gets involved in achieving the vision, mitigating discrepancies about importance of culture between different tiers of organization. Moreover, greater participation from workforce always comes with feedbacks for improvement and therefore better results (Gandhi, 2018).
  Safety culture is instrumental in creating an employer-employee relation, where both the stakeholders are comfortable in sharing concerns. As a result, workforce become more committed towards safety and show greater involvement through safety behavior (Gandhi, 2018).
• Workplace with better safety culture foster workforce, which are more open to report any safety related concern to their bosses as they know that safety is equally important at all levels of organization. Furthermore is also means that employer places equal emphasis on safety, profitability and productivity, therefore if any changes affect productivity due to safer work practices, employees are rest assured that they would not be questioned for having a good safety behavior (Donaghy et al, 2018).
• Rewards and recognition can be attached with safety culture as this will allow positive enforcement and hence will effectively boost safety behavior amongst workforce.