Keywords

10.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overall guide as to how the various management steps, recommendations, and processes discussed throughout the book can be adopted to enhance new employee safety, and indeed the safety of all employees. Organizations vary greatly in terms of the complexity of their human resource activities (e.g., complexity of documentation associated with a job, complexity of the processes used to recruit and select new employees, extent of induction and socialization processes, nature of prestart training, and nature of ongoing safety training), and their commitment and ability to adopt and deliver a high-performance safety management system. This chapter will attempt to explain how variation in the complexity of an organization’s human resource activities may require adjustments to the recommendations made to manage new employee safety risk factors and how new employee safety can be managed within a relatively limited human resource management structure. While this chapter provides an overview of the new employee safety management recommendations made throughout this book, it is recommended that the full description of each safety issue and it associated management recommendations are examined before any organizational intervention is undertaken.

10.2 Step 1: Acknowledgement and Responsibility

There is little doubt that a new employee, particularly during their initial period of employment (roughly the first 3 months of employment in a new job), is at an increased risk of having an accident, and their presence in the workplace increases the safety risk for other members of an organization (see Chap. 2 for a review of the research evidence). Thus, the first step in managing new employee safety is for the organization to acknowledge that every new employee will bring an array of safety risks into the workplace. This acknowledgment should be formal, and the organization’s safety officer(s) (or manager) should be specifically tasked with addressing all the safety issues associated with new employees. Thus, it is essential that the responsibility for new employee safety management is formally assigned to an individual or individuals.

While most of the safety issues associated with new employees are universal (always present), some will vary in terms of relevance as the nature of the new employee’s job and workplace varies. In particular, the degree of contact or interaction that a new employee has with other employees will change a number of risk factors. The individual responsible for new employee safety will be able to isolate the specific safety risks associated with their organization’s new employees, and develop a tailored management strategy. The overall management strategy will have more success if it is tailored to the specific situation. Each step in the overall management of new employee safety will need to be integrated with other human resource activities, and this should also be part of the individual’s responsibility. To be specific, the individual(s) responsible for managing new employee safety will need to advise employees who may be engaged in general human resource processes on how to alter what they are doing in order to help ensure new employee safety. Furthermore, the individual will need to have the authority to work with supervisors and employees to ensure that they also understand how their attitudes and behavior can influence new employee safety, how they can be exposed to safety risks from new employees, and how they can help to manage new employee safety.

10.3 Step 2: Understanding Job Risks Using Safety Risk Profiling

The safety risks associated with a job can be a very complex mix of system, environment, and human factors. Furthermore, these risks can change as systems and equipment age, as work is completed in different geographical locations, and as employees with different lengths of job tenure populate the workforce. It is vital that new employees have a clear and realistic understanding of all the safety risks associated with the job they are about to enter. Thus, information on job’s safety risks should be routinely collected, and communicated to job applicants, and new employees before they start work. Communication processes are discussed in the next section. To be successful, communication must be delivering the correct information which focuses on all types of safety issues: system, environment, behavior, attitudes, workload, etc. While there are very sophisticated techniques for analyzing task risks, a broad analysis of a job’s safety risks (broad in the sense that it covers all areas where risk may come from) is perhaps best provided by asking employees that are performing the job which the new employee is being recruited for.

Often the employment of a new employee is preceded by the resignation of an employee, and this employee should be required to complete a safety-specific exit survey as part of the exit process. Chapter 4 discusses the use of a safety-specific exit survey, and Table 9.9 in Chap. 9 provides examples of items which can be included in a safety-specific exit survey. These items cover not only risks from systems, the environment, and equipment, but also from employees’ behavior and attitudes, and from management factors. Arguably, the exiting job incumbent is the best person to inform the organization about the job’s safety risks. They should know all the safety aspects associated with the job, including aspects, such as how co-workers and supervisors are behaving, which are difficult, if not impossible, to identify via any other means. The exiting employee may also have very specific safety information about system issues which would be lost if not requested before they exit the job. Consider for example the job of bulldozer operator. A resigning bulldozer operator may well be able to inform the organization about a safety issue with the equipment they have been using (driving). This information may lead to corrective action, or may lead to the new operator (the new employee recruited into the bulldozer operator position) being informed of the issue during their induction or prestart training process. As another example, consider the situation where equipment is being operated in an environment, where after rain the terrain becomes particularly (and unusually) slippery. An exiting operator will know this, whereas a new employee, unless they are informed before they start, may not be expecting this added hazard.

The overall objective of Step 2 is to collect as much safety information about the job the new employee will enter as possible, which can be integrated into the process of recruiting a new employee, starting with the provision of information to job applicants during the recruitment phase, and ending with a full briefing on the job’s specific safety issues at induction and prestart training. As will be discussed further below, complete and realistic hazard and risk information is vital for all new employees, even those with many years of previous experience. As discussed in Chap. 3, previous job experience does not totally protect a new employee. For example, a new employee may have driven heavy trucks for many years, hauling a range of materials; however, they will have never driven the specific truck which they will be asked to drive in the new job, nor perhaps will they have driven on the specific terrain associated with the job. Thus, there is value in providing job safety and hazard information to all new employees, and this value is enhanced when the information’s degree of specificity is high.

10.4 Step 3: Communicating Safety Information to Job Applicants and New Employees

Safety and hazard information about a job is really only useful if it is communicated to the people that need to know it. For example, if an exiting employee indicates that care needs to be taken with a particular operational aspect of a piece of equipment, or in a particular operating environment, the people that need to know this information are those directly involved with the equipment’s operation and maintenance. As such, the information in the latter example really does not need to be delivered to job applicants (but it is relevant to the person that gets the job). It is, however, vital that information about safety is provided to job applicants during the recruitment and selection phase of hiring a new employee. To keep the process efficient, and yet deliver the desired safety outcomes, an organization should have a multilevel strategy for communicating safety information, starting with communication to job applicants and followed up by further communication to the individual employed (to the new employee).

Table 10.1 illustrates a multilevel communication approach. The target of the information is shown in the left-hand column, the level of resolution and method of delivery are  shown in the middle columns, and the objective at each level is shown in the right-hand column. The level of resolution of the safety information refers to how specific it is. Job applicants need general (yet job relevant) safety information, whereas the person that becomes the new employee needs all available safety information, including very specific information. Indicating that the job has safety risks does not mean that the organization is not doing everything possible to control the risks. In fact, alerting individuals to safety risks and hazards is in itself a useful step in the processes of controlling risk and hazard exposure.

Table 10.1 A multilevel model of safety information communication
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One of the key objectives associated with providing risk and hazard information is to help set realistic safety expectations. That is, the provision of safety and hazard information can form a realistic safety preview. Chapter 3 describes four different types of job applicant and described how the four types vary in terms of safety expectations and previous job experience. Job applicants classified as school leaver or career transition applicants will have the least amount of relevant job experience and are likely to have the most unrealistic safety expectations. Clearly, safety expectation setting procedures will be of most benefit to those job applicants. However, it would be unwise to forgo the use of a realistic safety preview, based on the assumption that the job applicant, because of their previous experience, would not benefit from the process. Tables 3.1 and 3.2, in Chap. 3, show that there are safety risks associated with all job applicants, including career-focused applicants, and these can be reduced by providing a realistic safety preview. Thus, it is suggested that an organization always include a realistic safety preview process when recruiting employees. The following three sections outline the general nature of a realistic safety preview and a safety expectation setting process.

10.4.1 Realistic Safety Preview: Job Advertisement

It is vital that new employees have realistic safety expectations, and the process of ensuring that new employees have realistic safety expectations should begin with the provision of information when the job vacancy is advertised. At the recruitment stage, starting with information in the job vacancy advertisement, it may be sufficient to note the safety risks and hazards associated with the job in general terms. Furthermore, a new employee will require certain knowledge, skills, and abilities (competencies) in order to perform a job safely, and these should also be noted in the recruitment material. Providing information on safety, or safety relevant competencies, in recruitment material should allow some individuals in the labor pool to decide that they do not wish to purse the job. Those that decide to make an application for the vacant job, and become a job applicant, should now have a clearer understanding that there are safety issues associated with the job. They will also begin to see that the organization is committed to safety.

There is considerable variation in how an applicant pool can be generated. For example, a job vacancy can be placed on an online job site, in a newspaper, or posted on a notice board. Irrespective of how a job is advertised, the common element is that a written description of more or less detail is generally produced. A job vacancy advertisement should cover the job title, what the key tasks and roles are, what competencies are required to perform the job, how further information (e.g., job description and person specification) can be acquired, and how to apply for the position. To include a realistic safety preview, safety factors should be noted in the job advertisement. To omit any mention of safety is to miss an opportunity to ensure new employee safety. Furthermore, it is simply wrong for an organization to assume that individuals in the labor pool will already know about a job’s safety risks. It is not necessary to provide extensive and detailed statements about safety in a job advertisement. Rather statements, such as There are safety risks associated with undertaking aspects of this job. This job is performed in a hazardous environment. Safety aspects associated with this job require employees to work with extreme causation. Safety compliance is a key performance indicator for this job. In order to maintain safety the successful candidate will have the following competencies …, are examples of what could be included in order to bring the safety factors associated with the job to the attention of interested individuals.

Communicating safety information in recruitment material is essentially providing the first step in the realistic safety preview process. As with a realistic job preview, some individuals will select themselves out of the process based on the information provided during recruitment. Other individuals will begin to develop clarity around the actual safety risks associated with the job, and this clarity will help to ensure that their safety expectations are more realistic. It is vital that organizations understand that new employees are likely to adjust their behavior to the level of risk which they assume exists. If the new employee has unrealistic expectations about safety, about risks, about hazards, or about the ability of systems, procedures, and people to protect them, they are likely to expose themselves to the possibility of an accident.

10.4.2 Realistic Safety Preview: Job Description and Person Specification

As noted, a realistic safety preview included in a job advertisement may result in some individuals deciding not to apply for a job. Those individuals that continue with the application process (that become a job applicant) should be sent the job description and person specification documents associated with the job. Organizations will vary in terms of the extent of these documents. Clearly, safety is enhanced, and also job performance, if an individual knows what a job requires, and a job description is one document that helps provide this information. Furthermore, both safety and performance are enhanced if an individual has the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to perform the tasks, and the person specification document describes the knowledge, skills, and abilities (competencies) which are required to perform a job. As noted in Chap. 3, a job description document can include a safety preview section. Figure 3.1, in Chap. 3, provides an example of a realistic safety preview section which can be inserted into a job description document. If an organization does not have job description and person specification documents, they should consider developing them. If this is not possible, they should at least provide a safety description, such as that shown in Fig. 3.1, to job applicants. Again the objective is to ensure that a new employee has a realistic understanding of the safety factors associated with the job they are entering. The process of providing a realistic safety preview and setting realistic safety expectations should continue through the selection process via questions on safety expectations (see Sect. 10.5), and is completed with the selected new employee during their induction and prestart training (see Sect. 10.6).

10.5 Step 4: Selecting New Employees

The majority of the work associated with acquiring a new employee is associated with examining information provided by job applicants and a consideration of whether this information indicates that the applicant could successfully perform the job. The steps taken by an organization to obtain information to allow for the select of a suitable new employee will vary considerably. In some instances, it might simply involve a rather unstructured conversation between a job applicant and an employer. In contrast, more sophisticated selection systems will involve multiple stages (e.g., application blank completion or CV provision, structured interviewing, psychometric testing, etc.), with a systematic consideration of applicants’ scores on a range of predictors assessed against predetermined cutoffs.

From a new employee safety perspective, there are two key considerations associated with selection processes. First, what abilities do the measures or predictors used have to provide information on the job applicants work related outcomes (e.g., the individual’s ability to perform the job safely, their attitude toward safety, and/or risk taking). Second, what assumptions do employees in the workplace hold about the organization’s selection processes, and how can these assumptions influence workplace safety. The next two sections examine these two issues in more detail.

10.5.1 Selection Measures

Chapter 5 provides an extensive discussion of a range of different predictors which can be used to select employees. As discussed is Chap. 5, there are very few selection measures which can be used to accurately and reliably predict an individual’s safety behavior. Of course, there are a lot of ways to measure the knowledge, skills, and abilities which may be needed to help an employee work safely. Thus, an organization needs to give careful consideration to the development and/or acquisition of the measures it will use when selecting employees. In particular, organizations should empirically show (or be provided empirical evidence if purchasing a selection predictor) that each measure that is used is indeed capable of accurately predicting what it is designed to predict. For example, a test which is sold as a predictor of an employee’s safety behavior should be shown empirically to actually predict safety behavior. That evidence is known as criterion-related validity and should be obtained for all selection predictors. While every effort should be directed toward ensuring that a new employee has the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitude required to work safely, reality is likely to be very different, in that even a very sophisticated package of selection predictors may have serious limitations when it comes to the accuracy of the predictions it makes. Of course, as the quality (complexity) of the selection predictors reduces (moves closer to the unstructured conversational pre-employment chat), the possibility of predicting a new employees’ safety behavior is removed.

While the use of inaccurate selection predictors can reduce the ability of an organization to ensure (predict) new employee safety, assumptions about what selection information means, particularly job applicant’s previous work experience, can also be problematic for safety. Chapter 3 provides an extensive discussion of experience and its relationship with new employee safety. Experience is a complex construct that should not be measured by simply examining a job applicant’s cumulative job tenure (how many months or years they have previously worked for). Table 3.3 in Chap. 3 provides examples of more specific questions which can be used to measure a job applicant’s experience and discusses how these questions can be scored in order to determine the value of an applicant’s experience for ensuring safety. Table 3.4 provides questions which can be used to assess and score a job applicant’s safety expectations. Inclusion of these questions in the selection process extends the realistic safety preview process into the selection stage. Of course, the questions in Tables 3.3 and 3.4 can be used in an application blank, and/or in a structured employment interview. Furthermore, the acquisition of detailed information about a job applicant’s previous experience allows for limitations associated with experience to be dealt with during a new employees’ induction, prestart training, and with on-the-job supervision.

In summary, selection processes can help to ensure new employee safety if they clearly define the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are required to perform a job, and obtain or develop accurate predictors of these. Put simply if an organization selects an individual for a job that does not have the knowledge, skills, and abilities which are necessary to perform the job in a safe manner, there will be an increased chance that the individual (the new employee) will be involved in an accident. Of course, working safely is also partly dependent on the new employee’s attitude toward safety and on their personality (see Chap. 5). Unfortunately, attitudes and personality are not easy to measure in an error-free way. In this regard, an organization should not assume that they have very much ability at all to predict safety-related attitudes or to determine much in the way of safety behavior based on personality profiling.

10.5.2 Assumptions About Selection Processes

The second factor associated with the selection of employees relates to the views which employees in an organization have about the processes which are used by their organization to recruit and select new employees. Employees will have varying degrees of information about how their employer recruits and selects new employees. For example, they may know that the company advertises job vacancies on a specific Web site or in a local newspaper, and they may know the information provided in job advertisements. Employees may know what the company requests from job applicants, perhaps a CV or perhaps the completion of an application blank. Employees may know what additional information is provided to prospective job applicants, perhaps a job description and person specification. Employees may also know what selection steps are taken to find a suitable new employee and know whether these steps are simply an unstructured chat or a more sophisticated application of a range of selection predictors. Employees gain this knowledge through their own experience and through talking to other employees.

What employees are unlikely to know is the ability of their organization’s recruitment selection processes to deliver an accurate outcome. Employee knowledge of this aspect of selection is largely an assumption. Chapter 5 provides an extensive discussion of research which has shown that as employees’ trust in their organization’s selection processes to deliver a new employee that will work safely increases, their perception of the safety risks associated with new employees will decrease, and at the same time, employees’ engagement with new employees to ensure everyone’s safety is reduced. Table 5.1 shows results from 3 studies which all show this basic pattern of results. Of course, this set of assumptions and relationship is very dangerous. If an employee’s trust in recruitment and selection processes is misplaced, they will be wrongly assuming there is a lowered safety risk from new employees, and based on that assumption, they will not attempt to guard against the risks posed by new employees.

Thus, the second strategy associated with selection which will help with new employee safety is to ensure that employees understand the limitations of their organizations’ recruitment and selection processes, and most importantly, how their assumptions about the organization’s recruitment selection processes can potentially put them at risk. Ideally, during annual safety training (see Sect. 10.8), employees will be reminded of the risks associated with the results shown in Table 5.1, and how these translate into a sequence of assumptions which end in a decrease in employees ensuring their safety when a new employee arrives in the workplace. Furthermore, achievement of a state-of-the-art recruitment and selection system, one which is accurate and reliable, does not remove the necessity to inform employees that it is dangerous for them to assume that the recruit and selection system will deliver new employees that can be trusted to work safely. As discussed in Chap. 7, all new employees will go through an adoption process in their initial period of employment, during which time they will be a safety risk, both to themselves and to other workers. Thus, the careful monitoring of all new employees, by all members of an organization, is essential during the new employee’s initial period of employment.

10.6 Step 5: New Employees’ Induction and Prestart Training

Once a job applicant has been offered a position, they become a new employee. However, before they actually begin work, they should complete induction and prestart training processes. As with recruitment and selection processes, there are two key factors associated with induction, socialization, and prestart training processes which influence new employee safety. First, there is the issue of what is covered during the processes. Second, there is the issue of how employees within the organization perceive the processes. Induction and prestart training are likely to (or should) deliver a significant amount of general and safety-specific information to a new employee. These processes should also provide realistic safety preview information (see Sect. 10.6.1), discuss the principles of a safety conscious helping culture and the components of a think before you help process (see Sect. 10.7.3), and introduce the trust building process outlined in Sect. 10.7.2. Chapter 6 discusses induction, socialization, and prestart training processes in detail.

10.6.1 Setting Realistic Safety Expectations

Steps described in Sects. 10.4.1 and 10.4.2 attempt to ensure that new employees have realistic safety expectations and have a detailed understanding of the safety risks and hazards associated with the job they are applying for. However, it would be unwise to solely rely on the provision of information during recruitment (e.g., in a job advertisement and in a job description document) and selection as the mechanisms to ensure a new employee has realistic safety expectations. In addition to these steps, the inclusion of a safety expectation setting procedure as part of the new employee’s induction process should add significant safety advantage. A safety expectation setting procedure that can be used during new employee induction is described in Chap. 3, Sect. 3.7.2. This procedure uses several scales to measure a new employee safety expectation, and these scales are shown in Chap. 9. The procedure involves the measurement of a new employees’ safety expectations and feedback of their responses (using a format such as that shown in Table 3.5, Chap. 3) along with the results from current job incumbents. This simple process will allow a new employee to clearly see how their safety expectations compare with current job incumbents.

10.6.2 Acquiring Information During Induction and Prestart Training

Clearly, the objective of induction and prestart training is for new employees to learn and retain information. Unfortunately, this objective may not be achieved. Chapter 6 provides an extensive discussion of the limitations associated with training to effectively deliver information to new employees, and also how induction and prestart training can be designed to help improve their ability to effectively deliver information. Adopting the recommendations provided in Chap. 6 should help improve induction and prestart training outcomes. It is also extremely important that every new employee is assessed to determine that they have actually learnt the required material, and they should be required to pass an evaluation process before they are permitted to begin work. The objective of the evaluation process is twofold. First, it is important that the new employee does in fact learn and retain the material which is delivered during induction and prestart training, as it should help ensure their safety. But equally important is the possibility that other members of an organization will assume that new employees have learnt information during induction and prestart training. If this assumption (discussed in the next section) is incorrect, it has many safety implications.

10.6.3 Assumptions About Induction and Prestart Training Processes

Traditionally, induction and prestart training processes will focus to varying degrees on ensuring that new employees understand organizational rules and policy, are introduced to work procedures, or perhaps shown how systems and equipment are operated. As noted, Chap. 6 discusses research which has examined the ability of prestart training to deliver positive outcomes, but the chapter also discusses how employee’s perceptions of prestart training can be associated with their trust in new employees to work safely, and how this trust tends to be associated with a lowering of perceived risk from new employees and a lowering of engagement with new employees to ensure everyone’s safety. Thus, in the same way that employee’s assumptions about a selection system can have a negative impact on safety, employee’s assumptions about the effectiveness of prestart training (if they are incorrect) can also have a negative impact on safety. Unfortunately, prestart training is rarely evaluated, and studies which have examined training evaluation results often indicate very poor outcomes. To overcome this problem, an organization can (1) design induction and prestart training to maximize its effectiveness, (2) evaluate the outcome for each new employee, (3) only allow a new employee to begin work once they have passed the evaluation process which establishes that they have learnt the required material, and (4) communicate information on training limitations to job incumbent’s during annual safety training (see Sect. 10.8).

10.7 Step 6: The Initial Employment Period

After a new employee completes induction and prestart training they will enter their new job, and will enter the initial employment period. The initial employment period, roughly the individuals first 3 months in the job, is an extremely dangerous time. During this time, a new employee can be exposed to numerous safety risks and must undergo adaption, familiarization, and trust development processes which have associated risks. Chapters 4 and 7 provide extensive discussion of these risk factors. To help ensure new employee safety (and indeed the safety of all employees), an organization needs to understand each risk factor and specifically manage it. Table 10.2 provides a summary of the safety risks discussed in Chap. 4, briefly notes the recommended management strategy, and notes where in Chap. 4 and in Chap. 7 a detailed discussion of each issue is located.

Table 10.2 Safety issues to manage in the initial employment period
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There will be some variation associated with each safety issue’s noted in Table 10.2 applicability to a job. For example, the first three rows of Table 10.2 deal with equipment issues, and not every job requires the use of equipment. Similarity issues such as task assignment and working hours may have little flexibility associated with them. However, managing each applicable safety issue to the best of the organization’s ability, within the constraints of their, and the jobs, operational limitations should dramatically improve new employee safety. It is also important to note that the strategies listed in Table 10.2 are particularly important during the initial period of employment and during the time that the new employee is adapting, gaining familiarity, and developing trust relationships (see Chap. 7).

10.7.1 Familiarization

Chapter 7 provides a detailed discussion of the adaption and familiarization processes which a new employee will undergo during their initial employment period. These processes will place demands on new employees beyond those associated with their job and can potentially reduce the new employee’s ability to maintain situational awareness. Organizations will vary in terms of how they handle new employee adaption and familiarization. However, adaption and familiarization processes can be managed to reduce the time required for their completion and thus remove the burden of these additional demands as quickly and as safely as possible. Chapter 7 notes how supervisors should be formally tasked with helping new employees adapt and familiarize. Chapter 7 also notes issues which may limit supervisor’s ability to undertake these tasks, and how co-workers will often be involved in the process of helping a new employee adapt and familiarize.

Additional safety issues arise when co-workers enter into the process of new employee adaption and familiarization. If involvement of co-workers in the process is not managed correctly, there can be a significant increase in safety risks associated with helping reciprocity (see Sect. 10.7.3). For safety to be maintained, the use of co-workers to facilitate new employee adaption and familiarization needs to be a formally established relationship between the new employee and a co-worker(s). Furthermore, issues such as co-worker distance, performance demands, and occupational/job characteristics (e.g., physical distances and protective equipment use) need to be taken into consideration. Chapter 7 discusses each of these issues in detail.

10.7.2 Trust Development

Trust plays a central role in workplace safety. For example, the organization trusts employees to perform tasks in a safe way. Employees trust management and co-workers to ensure their safety. Chapter 7 provides an extensive discussion of trust. Without doubt, an organization will function more effectively and safely if relationships between management and employees, and between employees, are characterized by trust. However, there are negative aspects to trust. Trust tends to reduce a person’s monitoring of others behavior, and when it comes to safety, this can be very dangerous. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss in detail how employees can trust new employees to work safely based solely on their perception of their organizations’ recruitment, selection, and training processes. Clearly, this is very dangerous. In my view, trust needs to be earned, and everyone’s safety will be improved if an organization formally adopts a systematic data-driven process by which trust relationships between new employees and other members of the organization are developed. Section 7.7.1, in Chap. 7, describes such a process. The process is relatively simply to adopt, and a team can easily be trained in its use.

10.7.3 Helping Behaviors

Chapter 8 discusses helping behaviors and offers a number of examples of how helping can result in an accident. Unfortunately, there are many reasons why new employees may wish to engage in helping during their initial period of employment, and these are also outlined in Chap. 8. Three strategies are suggested to reduce the likelihood of new employees being involved in an accident, or causing an accident, because of attempts to help. The first is to use the consequences of helping scale (see Chap. 9, Sect. 9.3) during the new employee’s induction process. Completion of the consequences of helping scale and a discussion of the new employee’s responses should alert the new employee to the risks associated with helping. Chapter 8 described two other strategies: development of a safety conscious helping culture within the organization and training new (all) employees in a think before you help process. Section 8.7.1 offers 8 principles which could form the key components of a safety conscious helping culture. Ideally, new employees would be instructed in these during their induction process. In conjunction with this, the new employee’s induction process should train them in the think before you help process described in Sect. 8.7.2. Overall, the objective is to ensure that new employees understand the safety risks associated with helping and carefully evaluate all aspects of a situation and the implications of their actions, before deciding to engage in helping.

10.8 Step 7: Annual Safety Training

All employees (including management) need to be reminded of the safety risks associated with new employees, and the nature of, and reasons for, the implementation of the management strategies used to ensure new employee safety. All employees should also be reminded how their behavior can influence new employee safety. An ideal place to discuss all of these issues in during annual safety training (in fact, safety training focusing on new employee risks should perhaps occur more frequently if a lot of new employees are arriving). However, employees should, at least once a year, be reminded of the key points shown in Table 10.3. The left-hand column of Table 10.3 notes the new employee safety management strategy (which would be explained to employees), and the right-hand column notes the key risk aspect(s) which it addresses (which should also be explained to employees).

Table 10.3 New employee safety management strategies and issues to discuss during annual safety training
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10.9 Conclusions

This chapter has provided a brief description of the key points made throughout this book in a single source. Arguably, improving new employee safety requires the adoption of a set of relatively straightforward strategies. Of course, the adoption of the recommendations requires a commitment on the part of the organization to invest time and resources in new employee safety. It is also clear that co-workers have a large part to play in new employee safety. Finally, it seems clear that if new employee safety is not actively managed, new employees will continue to have accidents and be killed at disproportionally high rates.