Workplace culture

While a positive workplace culture supports the health and safety of all workers, it is particularly important for young workers as it helps them to:

• understand that their health and safety is valued
• feel confident to report incidents and ask questions
• shape a positive attitude towards health and safety that will guide them throughout their career.

Workplace culture depends on the quality of relationships and communication between people. The 3 key aspects of workplace culture that influence the health and safety of young workers are:

• organisational values
• leadership
• consultation and communication.

For information about bullying and harassment refer to the Bullying and Harassment in the workplace webpages.

Organisational values

Most workplaces have a set of values or a mission statement that states the organisation's purpose and principles. Young workers will have their own personal values and beliefs. The alignment between the young worker's personal values and those of their employer will determine the level engagement and involvement in health and safety.

By gaining an understanding of what drives and motivates young workers, employers can engage with them around health and safety more effectively.

Some of the common values of the current generation of young people are shaped by shared experiences, as outlined below. When the workplace culture promotes or embraces these values, young workers will become more engaged. This is likely to contribute to increased participation and compliance with work health and safety processes, a positive workplace culture and better safety performance.

Respect - Young people want their contributions and ideas to be valued. They want their workplace superiors to demonstrate leadership, not just exercise authority.

A sense of purpose - Young people are driven by a desire for their work to be meaningful and to make an impact. Young people are committed and motivated when they see the connection between their work and its broader purpose.

Connectedness - Young people rely on dynamic social networks to share information. They prioritise collaborating and communicating with their peers in their work environment.

Reward and Recognition - More connected social environments means recognition amongst peers is vital for young people. Meaningful forms of recognition, such as training and development opportunities can be more important for young workers than financial reward.

Autonomy - Young people thrive when given opportunities for self-directed learning, application and accountability. Effectively engaging young workers is achieved by balancing a healthy level of autonomy with appropriate supervision and feedback.

Leadership

To support young workers in staying safe at work, there needs to be strong safety leadership. This is particularly important for their direct workplace supervisors and managers. By demonstrating safety leadership and encouraging positive work health and safety practices, a better safety culture will develop over time. Effectively safety leadership is demonstrated by the following principles:

Management commitment - Senior Management demonstrating their commitment by spending the time, money and resources needed to provide a safe and health work environment for young workers.

Responsibility and accountability - Identifying people who play a direct role in keeping young workers safe and providing them with clear expectations on what is required of them.

Quality communication - Communicating the importance of safety in different ways so everyone, especially young workers, can understand the message.

Resources and capability - Supporting young workers and their supervisors and managers by ensuring they have the tools, resources and capabilities to perform work safely.

Reward and recognition -

• Recognising young workers and their supervisors and managers that show initiative in relation to work health and safety and sharing their stories to inspire ad educate peers.
• Developing positive performance indicators that focus on promoting safe and productive work environments.
• Encouraging injury reporting.

Involved employees - Involving young workers in discussions and decision making to increase motivation to work safely and participate in work health and safety initiatives.

Safety as a priority - Making sure young workers are able to see that their health and safety is a priority in all aspects of their workplace to encourage higher levels of motivation and compliance.

Leadership style - Utilising different styles of leadership in different situations to set a high-level vision for a workplace that values work health and safety and backing this up by ensuring that the design of work tasks and processes and the interactions between young workers and their supervisors reflect that vision.

Effective safety leadership demonstrated by an employer, particularly direct workplace supervisors and managers, will positively influence young workers:

• values and beliefs
• risk perception
• motivation
• safety knowledge
• compliance
• participation.

Consultation and communication

Consulting with young workers about health and safety engages them in the decision making process. Young workers are often able to apply their own unique and valuable perspective to solving work health and safety issues. Workplaces can demonstrate that they value young workers' contributions by having a young worker representative on a health and safety committee.

Using technology as a communication platform can be a powerful way to engage with young workers. While the method of communication is important, the content and style is critical to ensure that messages and instructions are clearly understood and responded to positively.

Common communication issues and possible solutions

Difficulty understanding instructions for complex tasks and equipment

• Review existing documents with young workers and use plain English where possible.
• Involve young workers in drafting new documents.
• Use multiple forms of communication when providing instructions (for example verbal, written, images and/or physical demonstrations).
• Be specific when providing task or equipment inductions and avoid making assumptions about prior knowledge.

Maintaining motivation and energy

• Approach each work task as an opportunity to learn and build experience.
• Explain why a particular method is important, not just what or how to do it.
• Consider the suitability of tasks given to a young worker - 'unwanted' jobs shouldn't just be left for a young worker.
• Undertake regular check-in meetings to review progress and set goals.

Using technology as a communication method

• Consider the value that technology can add to engaging with your workforce.
• Ensure that supervisors and other workers clearly understand how the technology works.
• Align with young workers' existing use of technology (for example smartphones, social networking).
• Ensure that face to face communication remains the primary communication method.
• Establish clear guidelines about appropriate use of technology and understand the potential for distraction.

Responding to mistakes made by a young worker

• Provide an environment that supports learning from mistakes and continuous improvement.
• Encourage reporting of incidents and near-misses by avoiding blame.
• Invest time in giving positive feedback and debriefing.