Utilities often lead the way when it comes to health and safety because of the very nature of the industry.
We have spent some time with our customers and tried to answer the question: What does health and safety mean in Utilities? We quickly realised this is the wrong question to ask. What we need to ask is: What ISN’T health and safety?
Health and safety takes many different shapes and forms. Within the Utility sector, we distinguish four different aspects:
1. Environmental health and safety - Dealing with the natural environment and elements on a day-to-day basis.
2. Outside-of-physical-office health and safety - Includes a range of factors: driving, dealing with other people on the road, off-road driving, lone workers, and working together on a task.
3. Organisation's health and safety - Anything from loose carpet tiles to orgainsational restructures.
4. Personal health and safety - Making sure people are psychologically able to do their job well.
This shows how complex health and safety is and how many aspects there are to it. On top of this, the utility sector is a very hardcore industry, with people who are not generally known for their openness to talk and to share.
We are starting to see a few much-needed changes that will make sure that health and safety is adhered to and made common practice.
Some of the changes that we have already witnessed:
When health and safety started out there was a big focus on what we call ‘functional health and safety’: what tools can I provide you with to make your job safer and less risky? This focused on the Safety part of health and safety. We see this moving to both emotional health/wellbeing and physical health. You only have to look at the nationwide campaigns about bullying, depression and ‘dare to talk’ to see that mental health is starting to be taken seriously. People realise that you as an employee need to be healthy so that you can do your job better. The new era of connected devices and understanding physical health better also leads to paying more attention to physical health.
Health and safety is not something that just one person can do and enforce; it takes everyone to be health and safety conscious. We have come across some examples where people were unhappy about newly implemented health and safety rules but as soon as another person in their team did not comply with these rules, they were brought back into line by their peers. It is everyone’s responsibility.
We have also witnessed a big change in people management. It is no longer policing and punishment. To gain long-lasting benefits coaching is best practice. By rewarding good behaviour and actively teaching/coaching people how to change, you are implementing life-long changes.
Health and safety is no longer a tick-box system run out of the CEO’s office. It is everyone responsibility.
Having spent time on the ground, we can respond to what health and safety really means in our customers’ context. Smartrak provides a holistic health and safety solution that encompasses all levels of your organisation and provides tangible benefits to these needs.
Smartrak is actively looking for opportunities to come and spend some time with you to observe and immerse ourselves in your organisation.
