This month sees the launch of a new toolkit of guidance designed
to improve workforce safety in the offshore oil and gas industry.
The new Workforce Engagement Toolkit has been developed by Step
Change in Safety – an industry-based organisation
dedicated to improving UK offshore safety through collaboration of
best practices. The Step Change in Safety Workforce Engagement
Steering Group has been working to establish the guidance for a
number of years with the aims of enhancing a 'culture of
safety' at worksites.
The Workforce Engagement Toolkit is a document which provides
practical guidance to companies to help encourage and improve
engagement amongst all members of the workforce in an effort to
enhance their safety culture. It aims to do so by helping companies
identify areas in need of improvement and providing guidance on how
that improvement can be facilitated.
Central to this is the worksite survey, which allows employees the
opportunity to contribute their views on how engaged they feel in
workforce safety issues. The survey is confidential and is
submitted directly to Step Change in Safety. The organisation then
formulates a response to the company in the form of a worksite
summary report.
The survey is made up of a number of questions which will help to
identify how visible company leaders are, how the attitudes of
those leaders are perceived by individual workers and to what
extent those individuals feel encouraged to participate in safety.
It is hoped that the results of the survey will assist leaders in
identifying strengths and weaknesses within particular worksites
and therefore assist with the development of plans for improvement.
Further to this, it is intended that the results can be used by a
company as a benchmark to gauge performance both over a period of
time and across the industry generally.
It is hoped that employees will be encouraged to engage fully in
the development of worksite safety practices. Step Change in Safety
note that there is "clear evidence that a fully engaged
workforce is a crucial driver of continuous improvement."
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
Law-Now information is for general purposes and guidance only. The information and opinions expressed in all Law-Now articles are not necessarily comprehensive and do not purport to give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent developments.
The original publication date for this article was 06/09/2012.