Pioneering EveryDaySafe campaign seeks safety culture shift across the University

The University’s pioneering EveryDaySafe programme, promoting a sweeping safety culture shift and empowering staff to actively keep themselves and others safe, officially launched on 17 April. 

Coming on the back of a two-year review of health and safety, EveryDaySafe seeks to build an action-oriented safety culture, reflecting the University's position as a world leader in research and teaching. Built around community and working together as good safety citizens, the EveryDaySafe programme focuses on improving leadership, engagement, competency, networking, reporting and systems, with staff directly involved in creating the changes needed to improve the safety culture.  

We spoke to Neil Carveth, SSD Divisional Safety Officer, about the campaign: 

Why do you feel it is important for the Social Sciences Division to develop a strong action-oriented culture of safety? 

“We have colleagues across the Division excelling when it comes to safety. However, they can end up being expected to hold more responsibility than they should, with departments unintentionally becoming reliant on those individuals, leaving the departments with no resilience to safety management if those individuals leave. The action-oriented approach is a much fairer and resilient approach that benefits all individuals and the wider department, so it’s a win-win.” 

 How do you feel we can we achieve this?  

“Everyone has a role to play in creating an action-oriented safety culture by being a good safety citizen - both as an individual member of staff and as a manager or supervisor. In my view, it is critical for senior leadership to take an active role in encouraging safety within their departments, and to lead by example. To help with this, a checklist of simple safety actions that individuals and managers/supervisors can take will be released soon by the EveryDaySafe programme.” 

Why should we be good safety citizens? 

“By being a good safety citizen you are reducing risk in the workplace and helping to provide a safe environment for all users, and visitors to your buildings. We all rightly expect our departments and the wider university to provide safe spaces as standard, but we all have a part to play in this. Whether it’s an accident you can stop happening or an environmental incident you can prevent, this behaviour is something that I hope everyone by nature is motivated to exhibit.” 

 What key behaviours can 'good safety citizens' display? 

“EveryDaySafe is not about introducing new requirements, H&S policies or expected behaviours. It's about increasing engagement by all in the existing requirements and expectations - moving on to an action-oriented safety culture - rather than a passive safety culture where it's the responsibility of only a few.

On a day-to-day basis we can all make very small changes to our behaviour:

• Reporting near-misses, and dealing with tip hazards or spills we encounter instead of walking past.
• Supervisors or line managers can ensure that the relevant risk assessments are in place and that the appropriate training and support is available and taken up by the individuals that require it.
• Senior leadership can signal the importance of H&S by showing an interest and attending H&S committees, asking questions about the hazards within their departments, and helping ensure those with H&S responsibilities are given the time to fulfil this part of their role.” 

The EveryDaySafe initiative was set up by the University's Safety Executive Group. In the video below, the group's Co-Chair Professor Martin Maiden explains more about the initiative and what it means to be a good safety citizen: 

EveryDaySafe is underpinned by five key values: Success, Responsibility, Action, Learning and Leadership. In the video below, Professor Maiden reconstructs a real safety incident and explains how to apply these values in our daily work: 

Are you a good safety citizen? Take the EveryDaySafe quiz and win a £100 voucher 

The interactive quiz has 10 questions linked to the EveryDaySafe values and key safety topics, and includes useful links. Participants are automatically entered into a prize draw to win a £100 voucher of their choice. The closing date for prize draw entries is 31 May but the quiz will remain open. 

Take the quiz: https://forms.office.com/e/tEySTyeKAs  

Resources 

There is a range of resources available, from posters to content for display screens, intranets and newsletters. These can be downloaded from the UAS Comms SharePoint folder. 

Get involved 

You can find out all you need to know about EveryDaySafe and stay up to date with all the latest developments by visiting https://safety.admin.ox.ac.uk/everydaysafe. 

Future campaigns will focus on key safety topics and feature a range of working environments, including lab safety, taking care on the stairs, fire safety, understanding safety signs, incident reporting, and knowing your safety responsibilities.  

Have an idea for a campaign? Email everydaysafe@admin.ox.ac.uk.