Health and safety in the workplace are essential for protecting employees, improving productivity, and ensuring legal compliance. Investing in health and safety benefits both employees and businesses, creating a more positive and productive work environment.
Kaitlyn West, Head of Public Health and Quality at COLUMBIA signature and Public Health Manager at COLUMBIA pure, shares her insights on the topic, along with some tips on how to implement certain strategies.
“Workplace safety and health means ensuring that offices and our ships operate under the best possible circumstances for illness and accident prevention,” explains Kaitlyn, who says that this process involves a proactive identification of risks, implementation of mitigation measures, documentation and objective evidence to ensure that all regulations are adhered to.
Kaitlyn explains that prioritising workplace health and safety helps to ensure a positive working culture where employees are kept as free from risk as possible. She adds that it’s important for businesses to foster a strong culture of health and safety beyond compliance with regulations
“Fostering a strong sense of health and safety culture goes far beyond regulations,” she explains, adding, “Health and safety should be at the core of every employee’s mindset. The company can start developing this by offering continuous health and safety training, providing communication channels that foster open reporting for health concerns and implementing wellness programmes such as gym memberships, mental health hotlines and others. These practices should be embedded in the daily operations of the company to be effective.”
Ensuring workplace health and safety in organisations, however, comes with challenges. None of which can’t be overcome though. Kaitlyn explains that specific to the cruise and office interface, clear and consistent communication on the implementation of health and safety policies can hinder the success of these programmes. “Remote management of onboard policies makes immediate oversight and support more challenging,” she shares. “However, having an open emergency line, emergency procedures and immediate availability of trained personnel ensures that anything from a near miss to an actual accident can be dealt with promptly. Our teams on board are our eyes and ears in many cases. Yearly and bi-annual vessel visits ensure that the reports from our team members matches the reporting and provides a face and a name for our teams to reach out to.”
It is also important to note that in order to create safer working environments, there are certain steps leaders can take to be more proactive. According to Kaitlyn, leadership should represent the core of a strong health and safety culture as they are responsible for setting the tone of the company for others. Kaitlyn says, “Leaders act as role models through their own behaviours. Ensuring that the behaviours of leadership match the company’s policies is crucial in ensuring a strong health and safety culture.”
So, what key trends or innovations does Kaitlyn see shaping the future of workplace health and safety? “Key trends in health and safety match key trends in other industries,” she adds. “This includes the use of AI to monitor health, provide risk assessments and the use of IoT to manage sensors to detect health and safety threats. New technologies are also being developed to combat health and safety risks, one such being UV lighting to sanitise water or ionised silver surface coating to reduce bacterial and viral growth on surfaces.”
