Hazards vary greatly from one industry to the next. But one thing almost every job has in common is that new hires—that is, people who started a new job within the past three months—are at a heightened risk of injury.
Many safety experts view the first ninety days at a new job as an incredibly dangerous period. When new employees first arrive at a worksite, they are unfamiliar with the hazards that are likely to cause an injury as well as the site-specific safety protocols that will help them avoid an incident.
They also want to make a good impression and are unfamiliar with the workplace’s safety culture. Both of these factors make the new hire less likely to exercise their stop-work authority, ask questions if they are unsure of anything or otherwise speak out if they have safety concerns.
Fortunately, there are several things that safety professionals can do to mitigate the risks posed to new workers in the first days, weeks and months on the job. From EHS orientations to safety-conscious frontline leaders, there are key elements you can support to keep new hires safe as they adjust to their new job.
Robust safety onboarding
Some new hires arrive on their first day knowing next to nothing about the job. Others may have experience at other workplaces but lack critical site-specific knowledge. And every new employee will be unaware of the safety policies that your organization requires them to follow. This makes safety onboarding an essential component of new-hire safety.
But it’s not sufficient to conduct just one or two safety orientations and expect workers to know all the hazards and follow all the EHS procedures. Learning takes time and support, and new-hire safety onboarding should be viewed as a process rather than an item on a checklist. Safety professionals and frontline leaders should monitor new employees to see how well they’re learning and retaining key safety concepts, offering reinforcement and positive corrections as necessary, for weeks and months after the initial onboarding sessions. This will help new hires get up to speed as quickly as possible and allow their immediate supervisors to recognize whether there are gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed.
Safety-first leaders
Supervisors and other frontline leaders are the keystones of any new-hire safety program. As we’ve already seen, they can play a crucial role in the safety onboarding process. They can also play a major part in introducing new employees into the organization’s safety culture. But to do so, these supervisors need strong communication skills, good hazard recognition and an understanding of how to manage human factors.
If your company’s frontline leaders lack any (or all) of those three critical skills, then some training is required before they can influence the safety outcomes for new hires and the rest of their teams. The good news is that developing frontline leadership capacities can have a range of benefits for workplace safety, from keeping new employees safer in their first months on the job to reducing the dangers of human factors like rushing, frustration and ambiguity.
A culture of clarity
One of the biggest threats to new workers is uncertainty. This lack of clarity can take many forms, from not knowing how to complete a specific task to feeling like they don’t know whether they can raise any safety concerns they may have. This type of ambiguity can present itself in small daily tasks as well as larger concerns, such as hazcom, where uncertainty can quickly turn deadly.
Safety professionals have lots to do in order to onboard new hires, and so it’s easy to overlook the need to ease them into the company’s safety culture. But helping new employees feel a sense of psychological safety so that they’ll ask clarifying questions or exercise their stop-work authority can prevent all sorts of incidents from occurring.
As you review your safety onboarding process for new workers, it’s worth taking the time to ensure you’re integrating them into the existing safety culture. Having capable supervisors is a major part of that, and providing a proper overview of the right to refuse unsafe work can also go a long way.
Reducing the risk of injury that comes as a result of newness in the workplace requires a multipronged approach. Getting employees up to speed quickly, training frontline leaders to offer good communication and support, and fostering a culture of clarity can minimize the risks to new hires. And by helping the first few months of an employee’s tenure pass without incident, you’re making it more likely that they’ll continue working safely for years to come.