Nurturing Young Minds to Develop Safety Culture 002

Giving every young minds a good start at workplace is essential. It ensures that everyone can fulfil their potential, equally and with dignity. The common refrain is that young people are unprepared for the world of work, but instead of pointing the finger, employers should be supporting them in a more proactive way. As, young people need more support to make transition from education to work”.
It is employer’s responsibility to ‘take up the baton’ and develop essential business skills in their young employees during their first year in their employ.
The most effective place for young employees to learn them is while in employment and consolidates them in the workplace. Providing your young employees with a formal ‘graduate-style’ development programmes is an excellent way of helping them to learn and understand core business skills and terminology.
In the workplace, they will apply what they’ve learned on a daily basis, so that within a relatively short period of time, they will become proficient, productive and professional.

Employee Engagement

You want employees who are excited to come to work and ready to contribute. Engaged employees are good employees, and they’re the type who make your job easy as a manager. But it’s on you to create an environment that fosters employee engagement. Without strong leadership, employees won’t be willing to get super invested in their company or team. They look to you for cues. If you prioritize employee engagement and motivation, they will too.
Engagement with young people is a two-way street. Organizations that do it well not only display internal leadership – putting in place the necessary people, systems and resources – they also enable young people to participate fully and to develop and act as leaders. These organizations typically share certain behaviors:

  • ensuring young people have space, voice, audience and influence, grounded in their agency and rights
  • enabling young people to shape and implement agendas
  • explicitly committing to young people’s engagement and leadership by young people.

Engaged employees are ideal for managers. These are the employees who make it easy to do your job well. Ultimately, setting aside time, budget, and resources for employee engagement activities will increase motivation, improve employee retention, and ultimately make your workplace more efficient and productive.

Tips for Nurturing Young Minds to Create a Safety Culture

Culture is the environment that surrounds us all the time. A workplace culture is the shared values, belief systems, attitudes and the set of assumptions that people in a workplace share. This is shaped by individual upbringing, social and cultural context. In a workplace, however, the leadership and the strategic organizational directions and management influence the workplace culture to a huge extent. A positive workplace culture improves teamwork, raises the morale, increases productivity and efficiency, and enhances retention of the workforce. Job satisfaction, collaboration, and work performance are all enhanced. And, most importantly, a positive workplace environment reduces stress in employees. The following tips help to nurture young minds:

  • Communication: Regular communications with young minds should be delivered across the organisation to alert them to safety messages. There should also be a safety board that is updated regularly.
  • Training: Young minds should receive regular training on Health and Safety processes and policies. Steps should also be taken to monitor the effectiveness of the training. Any gaps or inconsistencies should be addressed through further training or one-to-ones.
  • Workshops: Workshops are well liked by youth, as they focus on learning through discovery and collaboration. Sessions can vary from a few hours to a full day event that can include various types of engagement techniques.
  • Leading from the Top: Leaders at all levels of the organization—team leaders, supervisors, managers and executive should take safety seriously and role model safe behaviors to other employees. This encourages buy-in from other employees because safety culture is ingrained in the company’s culture from the top.
  • Reporting hazards: The organization should encourage young minds and also other employees to feel comfortable about reporting hazards. A clear process for doing so is outlined to employees on the Safety board and the staff intranet. Any reported hazards must be dealt with swiftly and efficiently. When hazards are dealt with appropriately, this strengthens the reporting culture of the organisation.
  • Involve young minds in decision making: Employees’ buy-in to a safety culture increases when an organisation gives young minds the chance to have input into decisions on workplace safety policies, training and processes.
  • Praise employees: Employees crave appreciation for their work. Employees need regular appreciation to stay motivated. So, felicitate the young minds on the basis of their work activity.

Benefits

Organizations that give youth the opportunity to engage are not only getting a unique perspective but also give youth the opportunity to grow and learn how to exercise their leadership potential. When organizations give youth the opportunity to participate in meaningful engagement, they may receive solutions to issues they may not have ever considered. Engaging youth in conversations and decision-making has many documented benefits to both organizations and youth themselves. Here are some of the benefits of engaging youth decisions in organization:

  • Promotes a Culture of Inclusion: When youth of all ages are involved in engagement opportunities, it shows the strong dedication to diversity.
  • Improves Quality of Policy Decisions Impacting Youth: By engaging youth in discussions makes development of programs, services and policies more appropriate and relevant to youth needs.
  • Builds Trust and Transparency: By involving youth in decision-making or planning processes, the trust between individual and organization will strengthen over time.
  • Increased Credibility: When youth see that organizations have opportunities where they can share their voice and experience, it can raise the credibility within the youth population substantially.

In this respect, a nuturing young mind not only creates a positive safety culture but also helps businesses to enhance their productivity and improve their bottom lines.

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