The Health & Safety Maturity Scale

Safety is a process of continual and constant improvement. A journey, if you like. And, like any journey, one needs to know where they are now, where they are going, what the next destination is and how to get there. 

The Health & Safety Maturity Continuum (or 5Cs as we like to refer to them) is a tool that assists organisations, departments and teams in identifying where their safety culture is at, what the most pressing priorities are, and the strategies and initiatives they should put in place to improve culture and reduce injuries and incidents.

The Workplace Health & Safety Maturity Continuum

Each stage of the Continuum has its own set of characteristics, behaviours and ownership (and typically a lower level of injuries and incidents than the one before):

Crisis – Typically, something has happened to put safety in the spotlight – often a near miss, injury or injuries, a tragedy or a WorkSafe inspection. At this stage, the culture is characterised by management activity.

Control – The organisation has procedures, policies and processes that have been developed to some extent but are not widely known about or implemented. At this stage, the culture is still characterised by management activity.

Compliance –At this stage, the organisation will have a variety of measures, such as training and auditing, in place to ensure the controls are implemented and adhered to. At this stage, staff apply them because they have to. 

Commitment – Through leadership and engagement, staff understand why the controls exist and apply them because they ‘want' to – there is a personal commitment. 

Culture – Ongoing safety leadership and coaching have created a culture where safety systems are just part of what we do. Safety is owned and championed by all.

Inform your organisation's safety strategy

A Health and Safety Culture Maturity Survey allows organisations, individual departments and/or teams to measure performance, pinpoint where they sit on the maturity continuum and identify improvement priorities and initiatives across key safety elements, including:

• Leadership

• Accountability

• Consultation and communication

• General hazard management

• Psychosocial hazard management

• Safe systems of work

• Knowledge, training and engagement

• Monitoring and review.

The maturity and effectiveness of each element is assessed using the Health and Safety Maturity Continuum to determine the maturity of the organisation as a whole and/or individual departments and teams.

Tailored to your organisation’s unique needs

Working closely with you, the review process is carefully designed to meet your organisation, department or team’s unique needs and objectives. This typically involves:

• Understanding your operations, teams and workflows.

• Determining the most appropriate method or methods of data collection – focus groups, one-one-one interviews and/or surveys.

• Tailoring the lines of questioning to your operations and individual teams.

  
  

Once the review process has been completed and the data and insights analysed a comprehensive report is prepared and presented to you.

Detailing our assessments, observations, insights and recommendations for each safety element, individually and overall, it provides a strategic roadmap and priorities for improving safety culture and ultimately reducing injuries.

If you’d like to learn more about our Workplace Health & Safety Maturity Survey, simply contact us, call us on 1300 074 757 or email info@riskstrategies.com.au