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Why safety matters, in and outside the workplace

Written by Rosanne Bisetto

Safety! Wellbeing, protection care. Just three synonyms providing an abundance of ideals and attributes of why the word safety is so robust. Safety matters! A statement in its own right. Does the doubt of safety mattering have history? The concern seems so intensified. It requires mattering to support its existence. So why does it matter? It matters because you matter. (Divergent effects of transformational and passive leadership on employee safety. Kevin Kelloway, Jane Mullen & Lori Frances, 2006).

Safety matters in and outside the workplace because quite simply, practicing safety keeps us safe. Practicing safety is being mindful. Being mindful is respecting yourself and your environment. Safety announces concerns of problematic conduct, which anticipates worst case scenario outcomes. Safety is researching quality in all avenues of work relationships and practice and utilising proven outcomes and results, while tailoring specifics to personal or business choices. Upholding this term reciprocates the ideal that everyone is valuable and valued. When everyone reflects this concept meaningfully, everyone is equal and everyone is responsible. Being responsible for your own actions is priority for a safe work environment. Asking for help, or providing support where help is needed, is a safety concern for all.

Safety conduces long term effects on physical and mental scales, pertaining to provide support in long term routine practice. Safety can be measured in specific forms. Safety in the form of Emotional security is an area which can affect all people, in and out of the workplace.

To achieve emotional security as a proactive safety concern, the reciprocation of relationships, new or matured between clients and staff, requires a substantial dose of respect. To understand what respect is required, a person needs to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is achieved by stopping before acting and thinking of the holistic result your contribution will make. The choice in applying the level of action with everyone's best interest, which must enhance a win-win situation for everyone in some form, provides a proactive result at hand.

Win-win does not make a fence-sitter or a comrade but a decision-maker, who is positioned to make the best educated decision, which provides a future for the success of the cog-in-the-machine's, long term effect. Win-win, can come at a cost of some results being instant gratification to those of delayed gratification. The result is still an outcome and a worthy decision for safety, emotional or any type, is worth the process to achieve the safest outcome.

Building on personal knowledge is a team effort as information which is viable for one, can provide excellence for a community. Emotional security is a balance within personal and especially team environments. Relationships can intertwine in a persons or workforce environment. Respect and privacy as Codes of Conduct in and outside the workplace is provided as a guide. Revisiting these codes and practices is essential in interpretation and understanding of concepts. Assuming staff are all aware and know of safety, on all levels within and outside the workspace can be a naive outlook. Communication can fail the most competent workspaces and being relaxed on the front of safety, in all forms of security, is causation for failure.

Complacency does not fit into safety or security, especially in the form of emotional competence. Mental health, one of the largest safety concerns of this century (Safety & Job burnout: Understanding complex contributing factors. Beth Genly, 2016), leads to business failure (Mental health risk: a joined-up approach. Andrew Woolnough, 2016) unless warranted as a large part of employee's high productivity and desire to belong to a workspace.

Loyalty no longer exists, with more people moving jobs in the workspace than ever before. To keep contented, motivated and appropriate employees, an establishment must apply welcoming conditions (Invisible support and adjustment to stress. Niall Bolger, Adam Zuckerman & Ronald Kessler, 2019). Emotional safety is problematic when it's not taken seriously. (Discussion of basic conception of emotional intelligence. Jiamei Lu, 2005). So too, an unstable environment can have catastrophic effects between one or more people in and out of the workplace. Workspaces must be akin to designing a culture of security where self-expression and attitude to applying skill and talent are warranted, appreciated and respected.

Safety training in all forms requires individual and group behaviour and protection of the workplace values and beliefs. One workspace can support many personalities. Many personalities may not be able to create one workspace. The conglomerate of respect and focus on task is essential to succeed in workplace safety in and out of the environment. Attitudes are harnessed and freedom of expression are fruitful.

It is a balance which produces lessons learnt through practice and procedures. Harmony in practice can be achieved and success in safety is adamant. Work culture places safety first if its core values project this.

Safety matters because we all matter. Be part of what matters to you.

To belong, you must feel that you also matter.

Bring the sense of belonging to your workspace and your emotional competence will reflect a safe work environment, in and outside the workspace.