New Hires Need Safety - Part 1/6 - Understanding the Importance of New Hire Safety

Both Companies and their Employees rely on work safety:   Over-COMMUNICATE is the KEY!  Beyond legal requirements - it is vital to provide employees with proper training to prevent accidents, and build awareness, culture, reputation and trust. 

Stunningly, 34% of all workplace injuries happen to new hires within their first year. This is due to a new work environment, lack of experience, and not being connected to the company's safety culture.

It all starts by building a great Safety Culture (so much info on how-to google search) from day one. This “safety is a priority” approach sets the tone for the entire workforce.  “Safety first, because accidents last”.  Leaders, managers and other employees must set clear expectations and lead by example.  Show the new employee the seriousness of safety through training, regularly communicated safety goals, and share progress and any incidents transparently. 

New employees are eager to show their effectiveness and possibly even look for short cuts.  It is far better to discuss procedures - to determine if there are new paths for efficiency, and also, if there are relative dangers versus the current methods and procedures.  Emphasize real life incident possibilities related to your workplace (like past incidents) and discuss items why we use lock-out tag-out, or the damage that can occur from a dropped hammer, or how dangerous a forklift can be.

Finally, particularly with new employees, use ongoing monitoring and evaluation.  Use discussion, documentation, ongoing training and re-training, reinforcement and audit as well as employee feedback.  Emphasis risk/reward and why doing the right job right is so important.

Conclusion:   Over COMMUNICATE - To avoid serious workplace accidents that will have serious long-term impacts develop a culture of safety and implement an effective safety and training program.  The culture of the organization will drive the attitude towards safety.  If new workers see that shortcuts are taken and awarded, or bad decisions are tolerated … they will adopt that dangerous behavior.  Training a new employee may even provide insight into some of the existing issues with current employees.  Ultimately - Safety is a cheap and effective insurance policy.