Safety Culture, Leadership And Management

The Work, Health and Safety Legislations of the Australia Government, work in the favour of the employees to provide them with a safe and healthy workplace environment. Legislation has not only supported in safeguarding the working conditions, but also there is a need for safety culture and leadership to ensure the regulations are in practice in the workplace environment. Hence, it can be said that creating rule and regulations is not an ultimate solution to providing the best working environment to the employees. There is a need for proper regulations and safety culture for better implementation of the workplace health and safety policies (Healy, 2011). Along with that, an organisation need good safety leadership that will promote healthy and safe practices in the workplace to provide effective and efficient workplace environment to the workers.

The government of Australia has introduced the Work Health and Safety Act in the year 2011 with different amendments in the recent years. The changes have been implemented to make the workplace environment better for the workers. It saves the employees from health and safety hazards such as physical and biological hazards. Hence, the primary motive of the WHS Act is to provide the employees with a healthy environment and save them from any unwanted incidents (Grote, 2007). Now, in order to implement the WHS rules and regulations, there is a need for a safety culture that will promote the health and safety practices. It will motivate employees to keep the working environment safe and clean. Furthermore, Safety Leadership is required to motivate the members of the organisation to implement the best safety practices. Hence, the paper has been developed to analyse the literature on Work Health and Safety legislations and present the practical ways that can be used to have a better safety culture in the organisation. Along with that, the study presents various attributes of safety culture and leadership to improve safety performance at the workplace.

The government of Australia has formed national and regional government bodies to safeguard the health and safety requirements of the workers. In the year 2008, COAG committed to harmonise the work health and safety legislations by signing the IGA. According to the IGA, the Commonwealth government along with the state and territorial bodies will work together to improve the current working environment of the employees working in Australia. On the basis of the government agreement, the Work Health and Safety Act were introduced in the year 2011 that protects employees from different hazards at the workplace.

It is important to note that the WHS Act was introduced as bounding over the organisation to practice health and safety measures for the employees. Hence, it is important for any organisation to follow the rules and regulations of the Commonwealth government to operate smoothly in the Australian market (Hughes & Ferrett, 2012). The WHS Act is a mere overview of the practices that are required to make the workplace healthy and safe. On the other hand, the regulations act as a set of standards that must be met for specific risks and hazards such as machinery, noise, and manual handling. Along with that, the Act specifies the license that is required to carry of specific types of activities. The WHS Act also mentions the records that need to be kept by the organisation and reports that must be submitted to the government authorities to work efficiently in Australia. Hence, it is mandatory for every organisation operating in the Australian market to meet the rules and regulations of WHS Act, 2011 to be safe from legal obligations (Levy, 2011).

According to my point of view, it can be said that the Work Health and Safety legislations are itself not effective in improving the safety performance of the organisation. The WHS legislations of Australia are good enough to provide a better environment at the workplace. Notably, unless it is practised in real world scenario with proper monitoring, a positive outcome cannot be achieved. The government of Australia has proper infrastructure to monitoring and check the health and safety practices of an organisation working in the market. It is not possible for the government authorities to keep a regular watch on the organisation’s health and safety policies (Naevestad, 2009). Hence, it depends upon the organisation and its management to implement the work health and safety policies according to the Act to maintain a better environment for the workers.

Furthermore, there is a need for safety leadership that will motivate all workers to follow the health and safety policies. Along with that, there is a need to train the current workforce in order to ensure better safety performance. Implementation of a safety culture is required to have a better safety performance (Glendon & Stanton, 2010). Hence, it can be said that there is a need for WHS legislation as well as safety leadership and culture to improve the safety performance of the organisation.

In the contemporary business world, safety culture and safety leadership characteristic scan certainly improvise the performance standards of the organisational subordinates. The safety culture and safety leadership arrangements of an organisation support the safety management system by providing safety priorities to be followed by the firm. The culture of safety and leadership start with an organisational culture that delivers a sound working environment (Zou, 2011). Modern organisations have developed efficient safety management systems to protect the operational integrity and safety towards the employees. The unwritten standards of the culture of safety have defined significant norms among the workforce to shape thoughtful mindsets, behaviours and integrity to promote organisational safety (Anderson, 2016). Meanwhile, safety management alone cannot solve the safety issues without safety culture and safety leadership. For a multinational organisation or any local SME, culture of safety must be promoted at the highest organisational standards so that it can be embedded throughout the working environment of the firm. Through the identification of the organisational framework, management must influence the workforce to adopt standard safety culture and safety leadership patterns for long-run benefits. Understandably, the role of CEO has been significantly crucial in this regard (Dingsdag, Biggs, & Sheahan, 2008). In modern business industries, enforcing safety regulations and legislations will not be enough to deal with the unanticipated incidents. Therefore, a strong safety culture can motivate the workforce encompassing guarantee of a safe working environment. Moreover, a positive safety culture can identify significant actions among the subordinates to show commitment and willingness to deal with any untoward incident within the workplace.

Visible demonstration of safety leadership from the managers and organisational CEO can influence the subordinates to follow the safety regulations and guidelines in a strict way. The safety leadership can be instrumentally utilised to show the commitment of the enterprise towards the employees. Through the identification of legislation given in the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, organisations operate in different industries must develop strategic safety framework to be followed by the human resources. For instance, in oil and gas companies and mining companies of Australia, safety culture has to be suitably applied to reduce the number of untoward incidents. Government oversights must be accompanied by the safety culture to transform any fundamental weakness within the existing culture (Anshel, 2007). Herein, safety leadership strategy can ensure responsibility and accountability of the organisation towards the organisational subordinates. Moreover, in order to avoid any fatal incidents or to protect human life, the margin of risks must have been reduced by providing particular protective gear and equipment to the human resources working in heavy engineering firms, mining industries and oil and gas companies. Through the involvement of the CEO and other management staffs, safety leadership can commit the security and safety of the employees at the workplace environment. Such effective safety practices and culture can strengthen the relationship between management and employee (Biggs & Biggs, 2013). The safety climate of an organisation must be developed through the promotion of suitable safety culture and safety leadership stance that can be helpful to negate any harm on the organisational human resources. Moreover, adjacent policies and safety culture measures can deliver safety priorities among the workforce so that the employees can follow the guidelines valuing the safety culture of the firm.

In modern organisations, safety culture and safety leadership can be identified as one of the significant operational management to control the level of employee safety. The preventing measures associated with the risks in any organisation regarding safety must address the shortcomings and issues of the same. Safety culture of the organisation must be reviewed at a regular interval to make additional changes to be required (Arora, Johnson, Meltzer, & Humphrey, 2008). Along with that, the role of the leadership in safety culture will be evident to ensure safety commitments. In a safety culture, collaboration, credibility, communication, feedback and recognition, value safety and action-oriented tasks must be attributed to the safety approach and safety leadership to improve the performance and productivity of the organisational subordinates. Credibility focuses on the commitments and responses from a safety leader towards the employees so that they can be motivated (Antonsen, 2009). At the same time, collaboration has played a significant role in modern safety culture to help out others in difficult situations. Moreover, safety leaders can improvise safety leadership tactics through the identification of feedbacks outcomes and recognition of human resources. Evidently, communication encourages the workforce to deliver significant productivity providing a safe workplace environment. Effective and frequent communication in safety culture can identify any issues associated with workplace safety. Furthermore, value safety has defined the values, ethics and principles of the safety culture to be followed at the each point of management level (Parker, Lawrie, & Hudson, 2016). Thus, value safety can improve the safety performance of an organisation. Last but not the least; action-oriented tasks of a safety leader can determine a reactive approach to solving any issues regarding the safety of the organisational subordinates.

Meanwhile, the responses from the employees will be effective to note the performance standards of safety culture within an enterprise. The contemporary safety management approaches must be focused on the safety issues so that significant safety policies can be demonstrated. The performance-driven safety culture can provide excellent safety procedure to maintain the safety measures following the safety concerns (Arnold & Hartl, 2012). The review of safety culture can deliver the appropriate results to identify the risks associated with the workplace environment. The more subordinates can learn about the safety culture, the more knowledge on the system they can get. Also, effective training sessions and cultural debate on safety procedure should be enforced within the work culture to get the best out from the safety culture and safety leadership (Sitzman, 2016). Moreover, the WHS Act 2011 and other regulations must be introduced within the organisational culture and safety culture to be strictly followed. As the organisational subordinates will get engaged with the safety culture, more significant development can be seen within the workplace environment. In this way, the business owners and management can reduce risk factors and specific hazards from the workplace atmosphere encouraging safety culture and safety leadership practices (Arnold, 2011). Significant management communication, collaboration and practices on safety culture can develop a sustainable environment for the workforce to produce the most efficient performance.

Analysing the literature on Work Health and Safety legislations, it can be seen that there is a need of proper controlling body that will ensure the implementation of WHS policies in every organisation of Australia. Along with that, promotion of a proper safety culture in the organisation will automatically improve the safety performance at the workplace. There is a need of proper training and development program that will make the employees capable of maintaining a better and safe environment at the workplace. Every organisation need to implement safety leadership style through the management to ensure a high level of safety performance. Hence, it can be seen that every organisation is capable of meeting the legislation of Work Health and Safety through proper safety culture and safety leadership. The safety culture and leadership can be implemented through planned allocation of resources and development of appropriate strategies. Along with that, there is a need for regular monitoring and checking of the performance of employees to analyse the status of work health and safety. Furthermore, necessary changes can be made in the policies to improve Work Health and Safety performance of the organisation according to the observed results.

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