The importance of good work design

The World Day for Safety and Health at Work is an annual event that is observed on the 28th of April. Organised by the United Nations, the primary objective is to raise awareness about the importance of ensuring safety in all areas of our lives, especially the workplace. The theme for World Safety Day 2023 is “Good Work Design”, which aims to promote the importance of designing safe and healthy workplaces for employees, and is a cause which Rapid Global also champions.

Workplace safety is a crucial aspect for all organisations. It is essential to ensure that the work environment is free from hazards and risks that may cause harm to employees. A safe workplace not only protects employees from physical harm but also promotes their mental well-being. When employees feel safe and secure in their workplace, it can improve their productivity, job satisfaction, and overall health.

Good Work Design

Good Work Design is an approach to designing work that considers the needs of the employees and their well-being. It involves designing jobs that are safe, healthy, and fulfilling. This means considering workplace design beginning from basic job tasks to the overall work environment, work organisation, and social factors.

Risk management

One of the key aspects of Good Work Design is risk management. To avoid easily preventable incidents, it is essential to identify potential hazards and risks in the workplace and take necessary steps to control them. This can involve implementing safety procedures, providing adequate training and supervision, and ensuring that employees have the necessary equipment and tools to perform their jobs safely.

Rapid’s workforce management software includes tools to help streamline risk management. Rapid Risk is designed to assist your company in identifying, assessing, addressing and minimising risk. Rapid Risk provides you with a system that increases your capacity for risk management and reporting to help improve safety in workplaces of any size.

Another key element of risk management is ensuring compliance with your contractors and staff. Rapid Contractor Management does this by providing a centralised, real-time dashboard that enables you to automate your contractor pre-qualification processes. Here you can verify contractor compliance, insurances, SWMS and inductees all from a single screen instead of potentially missing important information from messy paper document storage.

Tim Willix, the National Manager for Health, Safety and the Environment at CJD Equipment, has found that the benefits of Rapid Contractor Management have been the ‘transparency, real time applications and reporting’. It has brought to light those contractors who are unfamiliar with risk management documentation. These can then be contacted and assisted with creating the necessary documents to ensure all personnel are fully compliant.

Employee well-being

Another important aspect of Good Work Design is promoting employee well-being. This involves creating a positive work environment that supports employees’ physical, mental, and emotional health. This can include providing ergonomic workstations, promoting physical activity, and offering employee assistance programs to support mental health.

Another part of this involves fostering a work culture that values safety and well-being. This can include promoting open communication, encouraging employees to report safety concerns, and recognising and rewarding safe behaviour.

Although making these changes can seem like a daunting task, Rapid Induct provides a time efficient method communicating work culture information from the beginning of employment. Doral Fused Materials created a broad range of courses using Rapid Induct, including separate contractor, employee and visitor/driver inductions and a course on employee code of conduct. Doral found this helpful as it enabled them to give personnel a short course outlining their zero-tolerance stance on harassment of any kind while employees could complete the course in the privacy of their own home. They also created a course to outline the emergency response plan, which has been a big time-saver.

“Before we did it, it was all paper based and you’d have someone come in for half a day of going through internal training modules and introducing each different hazard and every different rule to them” said Ian Sinning, Operations Support Coordinator at Doral Fused Materials.

Do you have good work design?

The theme for World Safety Day 2023, Good Work Design, highlights the importance of designing safe and healthy workplaces for employees.

Book a demo to learn how your business can benefit from Rapid’s innovative workforce management software to help ensure your organisation has good work design.