The ILO (International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency) estimates that some 2.3 million women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents or diseases every year, which is the equivalent of over 6000 deaths every single day. Worldwide, there are around 340 million occupational accidents and 160 million victims of work-related illnesses annually.

This is why the development of an excellent safety culture for businesses is essential. The cost of poor safety culture doesn’t just harm a business, its employees, and the environment around it; it affects the entire business process and promotes an inability to change.

And a true safety culture doesn’t just mean managing and mitigating hazards and behaviour, it should ensure that the methods used to enable it to happen leave the workforce feeling positive about themselves, their colleagues, their environment, and the business in which they work.

Involving all in safety

For this to happen, successfully, day in and day out, the message must be greater than simply a poster on a wall. The safety culture must be fully embedded within the business, allowing it to become a fundamental way of working. This can only be achieved with a clear purpose and message, with supporting tools, and actions being enthusiastically driven from the top through committed and effective leadership.



About the author:

Mark Breese is Global Sales Manager at Yokogawa RAP and has almost 30 years’ plant and process industry experience, including the Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Chemical, Mining and Minerals, Pharmaceutical, Power and Water industries.  Starting as a chemical process engineer, he’s worked and led teams in technical service, product management, sales, marketing, engineering, compliance and R&D and has been granted several patents for novel industrial equipment designs. During this time Mark has become involved in lean process methodologies and has trained company personnel in standard work, value stream mapping and problem solving.


https://www.yokogawa-rap.com/