Improving Safety Culture at Bruno Small Goods

This assignment focuses on providing recommendations for enhancing the safety culture at Bruno Small Goods. The document outlines strategies across various areas, including recruitment and selection, compensation structures, and fostering a positive work environment that prioritizes employee well-being and safety consciousness.

Recommendations for Bruno Small Goods towards Improving Safety Culture
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Recommendations for Bruno Small Goods towards Improving Safety Culture
Recruitment and Job Design
As a preventive measure at initial stages, recruitment and job design can help towards the
improvement of safety culture and the prevention of the aftermath injuries and illness
experienced at the workplace. During recruitment, the Human Resource team of Bruno Small
Goods should ensure that the selected candidates can demonstrate commitment towards the
organizational safety practices. This can be achieved by including work health and safety
questions in the interview and conducting safety psychometric testing. The type of job design
and work system and its general management can be a source of work-related injuries. Some
elements of job design like workload, rostering, shift work, and the communications
relationships and supervision if poorly conducted can cause job-related injuries. Therefore,
the organization should consider ergonomics, repetition towards improving safety culture that
will minimize any physical injuries. Henning et al. (2013) conducted a research on promotion
or protection of health using participatory ergonomics and found out that when workers were
involved in the creation of job designs the rate of accidents at work reduced because they felt
they were part of the work system and therefore would report or advice on any perceived risk.
Compensation and performance-based pay
Compensation is a legal requirement in the instances where the injury occurred at work.
However, research done by Bronchetti and McInerney (2012) shows that compensation can
to the contrary promote careless minor work injuries. To counter such a scenario, the
management should implement continuous error checking system and establish clear
guidelines on the terms and conditions which qualify for compensation. Performance-based
pay is another way the company can adapt to improve safety culture. Research done by Ellen
et al. (2012) found out that employees that were rewarded based on their performance were

much committed to the work and did not need supervision as long as the right tools of work
were provided. Also, there were increasing levels of worker safety.
Embrace and support of safety culture by line managers first
Employee attitude towards safety policies and procedures is considered as the first prevention
to work-related injuries (Kapp, 2012). To foster such an attitude in employees, it must begin
with the commitment of managers through their support and promotion of the safety policies
and procedures. The management can be encouraged to embrace and promote the safety
policies through performance based-pay and continuous training on the significance of safety
organizational culture. Such a commitment will help discourage the normalization of
defiance. Without the support from those expected to enforce safety, staff will find no
motivation to adhere to safety policies and procedures. The study by (Kapp, 2012) revealed
that the support of management is critical industrial setups. The results of the research
showed that the safety climate of employees at the workplace improved based on the attitude
and practices of the leadership, also, in such scenario, the employees were compliant with the
established safety policies.
Endorse error checking
The supervisors should be tasked to check for errors on a routine basis to avoid or mitigate
the consequences of those errors before they advance to serious injuries (Spath, 2011). Based
on the Spath review of case studies in the medical field, error checking will establish a
continuous learning climate which will serve as a lesson to employees to learn from their
previous mistakes and not cover them up. Such an environment of learning will avoid the
punitive climate of blaming and pointing fingers to those who err Schultz and Schultz (2015)
and instead it will focus on the investigation of the cause of the error after which the entire
organization will be able to gain a lesson from it.

Promote teamwork
Bruno Small Goods Company just like other agencies is dependent on the team of staff to
accomplish the objective of improving safety culture. For example, the medical society
encourages teamwork as a tool for improving safety during work (Thomas and Galla, 2013).
Collaboration features specific activities that the team does (flexible and adaptive behaviors),
the thoughts of the members (cognitions), and feelings of the team members (attitudes) Salas
& Cannon-Bowers, 2001). The organization should encourage its staff to work cooperatively
through interaction and synchronizing at the level of the various teams. The coordinated
teamwork demands the merging of processes, approaches, and activities that permits the
participants to work interdependently. Studies were done by Dollard et al., (2012) in
Australia showed that the competencies acquired through teamwork would logically improve
safety culture in the organization.

References
Bronchetti, E.T. and McInerney, M., 2012. Revisiting Incentive Effects in Workers'
Compensation: Do Higher Benefits Really Induce More Claims?. ILR Review, 65(2), pp.286-
315.
Dollard, M.F., Bailey, T., McLinton, S., Richards, P., McTernan, W., Taylor, A. and Bond,
S., 2012. The Australian Workplace Barometer: Report on psychosocial safety climate and
worker health in Australia. Centre for Applied Psychological Research, University of South
Australia. Accessed on 4 October 2017
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarven_Mclinton/publication/272169998_The_Australia
n_Workplace_Barometer_Report_on_Psychosocial_Safety_Climate_and_Worker_Health_in
_Australia/links/54dd3c4e0cf25b09b912f28e/The-Australian-Workplace-Barometer-Report-
on-Psychosocial-Safety-Climate-and-Worker-Health-in-Australia.pdf
Ellen, M., Lippel, K., Ron, S., Agnieszka, K., Liz, M., Carrasco, C. and Pugliese, D., 2012.
Workers’ compensation experience-rating rules and the danger to workers’ safety in the
temporary work agency sector. Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, 10(1), pp.77-95.
Henning, R.A., Reeves, D.W. and CPH-NEW Research Team, 2013. An integrated health
protection/promotion program supporting participatory ergonomics and salutogenic
approaches in the design of workplace interventions. In Salutogenic organizations and
change (pp. 307-325). Springer Netherlands.
Kapp, E.A., 2012. The influence of supervisor leadership practices and perceived group
safety climate on employee safety performance. Safety science, 50(4), pp.1119-1124.
Accessed on 4 October 2017
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E_Andrew_Kapp/publication/257356413_The_influenc

e_of_supervisor_leadership_practices_and_perceived_group_safety_climate_on_employee_s
afety_performance/links/574d773e08ae061b33031847/The-influence-of-supervisor-
leadership-practices-and-perceived-group-safety-climate-on-employee-safety-
performance.pdf
Schultz, D. and Schultz, S.E., 2015. Psychology and work today 10E. Routledge.
Spath, P.L. ed., 2011. Error reduction in health care: A systems approach to improving
patient safety. John Wiley & Sons.
Thomas, L. and Galla, C., 2013. Building a culture of safety through team training and
engagement. BMJ Qual Saf, 22(5), pp.425-434. Accessed on 4 October 2017.
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