Login
en
fr

How to properly prepare and organize your Safety Days ?

Safety Days are events organized by companies, organizations, or institutions to promote workplace safety and raise employee awareness of best practices in health and safety.

These days are designed to highlight the importance of safety in all aspects of a company’s operations, from accident prevention to fostering a proactive safety culture.

The main objectives are to provide elements of awareness, prevention, and engagement :

  • Awareness : Remind employees of potential workplace risks and encourage safe behaviors.
  • Prevention : Identify risky practices and implement measures to prevent them.
  • Engagement : Encourage active employee participation in safety initiatives.

What are the benefits and advantages of these workshops?

Safety Days also come with several important challenges. These challenges must be addressed to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of safety initiatives. Tackling these issues proactively helps maximize the impact of Safety Days and build a strong, lasting safety culture within the company.

  • Reduction of accidents/incidents : By raising employee awareness of hazards and prevention measures, the risk of accidents can be reduced.
  • Employee well-being : A safe work environment contributes to the physical and mental health of employees.
  • Regulatory compliance : Ensures adherence to health and safety standards and regulations in the workplace.

Key questions to consider

First and foremost, it’s important to ask the right questions in order to organize your Safety Days workshops effectively. While professional intervention is necessary, it is essential to establish a general roadmap by asking the right questions.

  • What are your objectives ? : It is essential to define the expected outcomes of the day. Objectives may include, for example, raising employee awareness of specific occupational hazards or improving communication between departments on prevention topics. These objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART).

 

  • What are the major risks identified in the company ? : Each company has specific risks related to its industry, structure, and processes. Understanding these risks (physical, psychosocial, etc.) allows for tailoring the workshop. It is important to rely on previously conducted occupational risk assessments, reported accidents, and employee feedback.

 

  • Which employees and/or roles are involved ? : Identifying the target roles or individuals is crucial for customizing the workshop content. Certain categories of employees may be more exposed (production staff, machine operators, etc.), while others may benefit from general awareness. It could be relevant to design specific modules for certain positions.

 

  • What format should be chosen ? : The workshop format should align with the company’s culture and employee expectations. This could involve practical workshops (demonstrations, simulations), interactive conferences or training sessions, roundtable discussions to encourage experience sharing, or incident simulations to make the day more immersive. Choosing a dynamic format is important to engage participants and ensure their involvement.

 

  • Who will lead the day ? Which professionals to choose ? : The choice of facilitators is critical to the success of the day. You can bring in safety experts and/or consultants specializing in risk prevention, engage internal speakers (HSE managers, department heads, employee representatives) who are familiar with the company’s realities, or hire external trainers to provide fresh perspectives and specific expertise.

 

  • How to promote the event internally ? : To encourage participation, it is important to communicate effectively about the event in advance. You can use posters, informational emails, or manager announcements during team meetings.

 

  • Is there commitment from management ? : Management involvement is a key factor for success. They should approve and actively support the project, send strong messages about safety, be present at the event to show their commitment, and regularly communicate on safety issues and the importance of the workshop.

 

  • How to measure the day’s effectiveness ? : Evaluating the results is essential for improving future editions. Several indicators can be used, such as satisfaction surveys at the end of the day, analysis of the number of accidents or incidents after the workshop, and observed changes in behavior.

Feedback and experience

Co-writing with Mary-Laure Maxence – Ergonomist IPRP et Occupational Psychologist
Once you have anticipated and addressed all these questions, you are ready to implement Safety Days.

So, how do you organize and prepare for these Safety Days?

I) The Kick-off Meeting

First of all, before the preparation phase, we suggest that the company hold a kick-off meeting with all the stakeholders involved in this project in order to :

1) Understand your needs :

    • The theme of the day (health/safety/ergonomics/TMS prevention).
    • The type of format (for example, interactive workshops).
    • Agree on the desired approach: as ergonomists, we propose a participatory approach so that all employees are active participants during these events. These exchanges with employees will allow us to adapt our activities based on their feedback and experiences in the workplace.

2) Identify work positions:

      • The number of positions.
      • Understand the work activities performed by employees to help them connect the concepts discussed to their real-life experiences. It is important to start from the actual situation to ensure effective risk awareness and promote consciousness of these risks.
      • The movements/postures adopted.
      • List the constraints, pains, and occupational diseases related to these positions.

3) Identify key messages you wish to convey to employees;

4) Discuss the organization of the day and the intervention schedule.

This kick-off meeting is crucial to ensure the success of the day and promote your prevention culture within the company.

2) The Preparation Phase

Next, after reviewing and validating all the elements, we move on to the preparation phase. This phase is intended to be participative and interactive.

Specifically, we collaboratively design the activities of this workshop around prevention. The goal is to offer an interactive and engaging workshop for employees to raise awareness of the risks related to their work and to help them understand the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).

We work together on developing materials that cover the theoretical aspects, addressing various concepts related to risk.

The next step is the facilitation of this day. This relies on a participative approach (based on upward, downward, and horizontal communication) and is divided into several stages :

Step 1 : Presentations

  • What is an ergonomist ? : The goal here is to reassure employees who are unfamiliar with this profession and to establish a necessary trust relationship to facilitate exchanges throughout the workshop.
  • Why am I here ? : We remind everyone of the objectives of this day and the structure of the risk awareness workshop.

Step 2: Introduction to the theoretical part

As part of raising awareness about MSD risks, we propose to collaboratively define MSDs with the employees. The aim is for employees to take ownership of this concept and connect it to their experiences at work, thus enhancing their awareness of the risks related to their positions.

Next, we ask them questions about their jobs to gather their feedback:

  • Have you ever experienced pain in your workplace ?
  • Were these pains related to a specific task ?
  • How did you address them ?
  • What resources are available to help you cope with such situation ?

After discussing their work experiences, we introduce the risk factors for MSDs (physical, organizational, work environment, individual) and connect these to their jobs and the experiences they mentioned earlier.

We then discuss the methods, practices, and strategies each employee uses to perform their work activities. The goal is to share everyone’s practices so they can be capitalized on and replicated.

Step 3 : On-Site simulation

For this step, we accompany groups of employees to the identified workstations and ask willing employees to simulate their work activities. During this phase, we ask the other employees to observe the work situation and identify constraints and points of tension.

Initially, we encourage employees to observe with the naked eye, and then we provide them with an interactive and fun tool, the KIMEA solution. This tool, using a camera, allows us to capture employee movements and evaluate and identify constraints on the job at that moment using color codes, thereby facilitating discussion around the work situation.

After listing all the points of tension, we engage in a discussion about the risk factors to identify those related to this activity from organizational, physical, psychosocial, and environmental perspectives.

Finally, we encourage employees to share their work methods and protective strategies when facing challenging situations. The objective is to equip them with as many resources as possible to handle future constraints. For the company, this allows for capitalizing on these experiences and considering a sharing of best practices between experienced employees and newcomers.

3) Feedback from the Workshop

To conclude the Safety Days, we conduct two feedback sessions:

One with each group of employees to:

  • Collect their immediate feedback on the day’s activities (organization, content, facilitator, etc.);
  • Ensure they have become aware of the risk factors related to their job (what they have retained and understood from the session on risks).

Next, we conduct a feedback session with management to:

  • Provide immediate feedback on the day;
  • Share the list of constraints, areas for improvement, and the strategies employees have developed to leverage them;
  • Propose setting up a time for discussion and experience-sharing to reflect on work practices, strategies, and the resources needed for better protection.

The main goal is to foster an open dialogue about this awareness day.

Conclusion

Implementing a prevention approach is a crucial step in promoting a healthy, safe, and performance-driven work environment within your organization.

One of the key drivers lies in training and raising awareness among your employees : empower them to take an active role in their own prevention efforts to ensure the sustainability of your prevention approach !

Other posts

See all posts