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She said that having fun was important for everyone’s spiritual health. I think she used the phrase ‘infectious positivity’!
There’s much more to it than just being good for your spiritual health – organisations that really want to be a benchmark for excellence take active steps in attitude management in the workplace.
I see it all the time when the spectre of health and safety appears – negative attitudes, impatience that it gets in the way, fear of doing things wrong, worry about being ‘caught out’ and frustration that the operation has to be modified to be compliant. It’s a repressive situation that encourages staff not to take responsibility.
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In this kind of culture risk management and safety issues are viewed as a nuisance and as a bunch of restricting rules and regulations.
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‘We can’t do that because of health and safety’ has become a catchphrase nationwide.
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Health and safety practitioners are seen as a necessary evil – or sometimes as a joke.
Responsible organisations take another approach. They understand that when you give people a more positive spin you get a better performance from them.
Good managers will see mistakes as an opportunity to learn an important lesson and look at why it went wrong? They encourage staff to come up with a better way of doing that task that would be equally safe – or, even better, eliminate the risk altogether. Praise for positive suggestions creates a completely different environment.
The more praise people get, the more they’re likely to do it better next time. There are other benefits too – staff that feel valued, stay. Creating an environment where people want to do things right doesn’t just make them feel good – it encourages improvements and helps retain those members of staff that cost you so much to recruit, train and develop.
It starts at the top: if you create a positive environment in your organisation you’ll really see a difference.
Written by Malcolm Tullett; Risk and Safety Plus Ltd. www.riskandsafetyplus.com 0845 430 9461
 Malcolm Tullett launched IRM Safety in 1997 and merged with Risk Interventions in 2008 to form Risk and Safety Plus Ltd.
Malcolm has a wonderfully refreshing attitude to Health and Safety and Risk Assessment: mention the word “conkers” to him and he is likely to give you a lecture on the idiocy of people who don’t know what a risk assessment is about! If you are looking for a common sense approach, Malcolm is the person to speak to.
Malcolm is an ex-firefighter and a former skydiver: he understands risk! Even more importantly, Malcolm understands business and the entrepreneurial spirit. He believes that the compliance of Health and Safety and risk management should be a profit generator; something that is incorporated into the core of a business and part of the business improvement process. Malcolm makes compliance work for businesses instead of being an obstacle.
Malcolm has also won an IET (Institution of Engineering & Technology) award for his concept - PROPA™ which helps deliver integrated risk and safety.
Contact Malcolm on 0845 430 9461 or e-mail: malcolm.tullett@riskandsafetyplus.com
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