Safety culture, safety culture, safety culture. It’s a well-covered topic. We all know it’s important to our dealerships. But how do we take concrete steps to make sure our dealership safety culture thrives?

I’ll be honest here. It’s not like you can wave a wand, think good thoughts, and your magical safety culture will flourish in your service bays. Building a strong culture of safety in your dealership takes dedication. While it may not be magical, it’s not impossible. And we’ve got some actionable steps you can take to get your dealership’s to take root.

Build a team comprised of employees in varied roles to help bring your safety culture to life. As a best practice, build that team out of those who volunteer to help. If you’ve got a team of “volun-tolds” they might not necessarily be motivated to stay committed to the cause. Consider, too, that if an employee taken off a particular job to be on the safety culture team, be sure you’re paying them for that extra time.

When building your team, find out if any workers have specialized experience or experience that could benefit the team as you set out to hone your safety program success. For example, if you have a technician who used to work as a forklift operator, they could be a great resource explaining generally what your forklift training program should focus on. Or, let’s say someone was previously a firefighter. They might have some really good general knowledge to share on workplace CPR and first aid.

Once you’ve assembled your team, it’s all about establishing priorities, identifying hazards, and discussing risk mitigation strategies.

Start by assessing the probability and severity of those hazards. Once you have a sense of how likely something is to happen, you can start to prioritize as a team.

For example, let’s say we’ve identified a car falling off a lift as a risk. The probability of it happening may be low, but the severity could be catastrophic, so this may very well become the number one priority.

Another priority may be reducing the number of slips and falls on the shop floor. Also, perhaps you had a forklift accident occur once and a bunch of hand-tool errors.

If you show up to the shop floor without safety glasses on, that sends a message that perhaps those safety glasses aren’t all that necessary on the shop floor. The next thing you know, the mechanics aren’t wearing eye protection, and an accident results in an eye injury. So, always “practice what you preach.”

Give employees responsibility and provide them with active ways to be involved in your safety program.

Responsibility leads to accountability, and this is a critical point to focus on when it comes to safety engagement. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• Track the number of workers involved in developing safety procedures, and participating in tool-box talks, and injury investigations
• Ask employees for feedback on reasonable safety goals ahead of safety meetings
• Look to see how many employees participate in safety-perception surveys
• Ask for their input in developing task-specific job safety analyses/job hazard analyses on how to perform routine tasks safely
• Have them participate on accident investigation teams and help to identify/implement corrective actions to eliminate hazards

These are also all examples of measurable leading indicators that can help make a safety program successful.

Use incentive programs based on leading indicators.

Need some ideas?

• Institute a “See Something Say Something” initiative.
• Reward those who participate in a job safety analysis who identify the risks their specific tasks pose.
• Start an anonymous safety glasses spot check. Team mates who are following the rules get a reward, such as lunch with the company president.

Whew! This is a lot of information to digest.
But worth it for a strong dealership safety culture.

But, we’re confident that if you invest in addressing these issues, you’ll improve and sustain a successful safety program.

KPA has everything you need to create a safety program that works and a dealership safety culture that sticks. Organizations of all kinds rely on our tools, training, and consulting expertise to minimize risk and maximize business performance. Let us show you how we can help.