Managing employees who tend to disregard safety and procedural rules can be hectic. It can sometimes make you question your why for being a safety practitioner, supervisor or manager.
The “Triple E model” approach has been developed out of real life and workplace experience in addressing such issues at work. Read along as we dive in to share insights into this approach.
- The first E of this model is Educate: This implies providing the relevant safety training and awareness to all employees. You can’t expect employees to act safely by following Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) if they are not well informed. An informed worker is always a proactive worker, so train, and retrain!
- The second is to Empathize: There are many reasons why workers may not align with procedure despite being trained. Reasons could be stress, lack of understanding of the procedure, health issues, sometimes negligence, etc. Empathizing with workers to understand why they’re not complying will help you understand them better, identify the root cause and take an appropriate corrective action. By empathizing with employees, you step in their shoes and walk in their steps for a while.
- Thirdly, you Enforce: This last approach deals with ensuring that all safety procedures and policies are being enforced. By this, enforcement should be a top to bottom approach and not the reverse. Leadership must lead by example, and anyone who complies, or does not comply must be dealt with according to the procedure in place. Enforcement also means providing the necessary resources by top management to achieve full compliance by employees.
With this model, I believe supervisors, managers and safety professionals, will be able to provide an enabling environment for employees and employers to have a fair ground in collaborating to achieve health and safety standards at the workplace.
A win for #Safety is a win for #All.
Raphael Badohu (C 37) & Ernsesto Askesu Paintsil (C )
HSEQ Practitioners