Effective Changes in Safety

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It’s a New Year, and with a New Year comes New Year’s Resolutions.   People vowing to make changes in their health, their diets, their relationships and in their finances among other things.  Changes are not always easy to make and often time require some serious thought and stepping outside your comfort zone in order to accomplish.  This is no different for changes that need to be made in the workplace.  Health and Safety Professionals are always looking for changes that need to be made in order to increase safety and productivity.  A blog on ASSE blog site talks about how different types of people adapt to change and how an EHS professional can use five common categories of people in order to effectively work on safety initiative changes.

1.) The Innovators:  This group of people is the first to make a change.  They aren’t afraid to try something new if it could be for the bigger good.  They are willing to adapt to new safety initiatives.

2.) Early Adapters:  These trendsetters are always looking for innovations and are willing to try new ideas when it comes to workplace safety.

3.) Early Majority: This group of workers is pretty comfortable with new ideas but needs proof or observable good results in order to fully adapt to a new way of doing things.

4.) Late Majority: These workers are much less comfortable with trying new things and entertaining new ideas but they generally join the movement even if it is reluctantly.

5.) Laggards: This group of individuals has a hard time with change.  They feel that it is risky and it makes them uncomfortable.  They will need the most prompting and help with it comes to a new safety initiative.

Knowing these different groups of people and how to handle them may help a workplace change become a new, effective way of going about daily routines.  Approaching each group in a different way or preparing information that makes each group comfortable may seem like a lot of work but may be the most successful in the end.   From determining the best safety product placement to changing the way an operation is run; safety is everyone’s business.

Viral Safety: Getting Buy-In Across the Boardwww.ehsworks1.blogspot.com  March 11, 2014.  January 14, 2016.

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