Whether intentionally or subconsciously, the employees of any successful business look to the top for direction and meaning. Business leaders should engage, inspire and encourage the workforce with focus and positivity, they are the role models that give their teams the tools and resources they need to succeed. For the successful implementation of any strategy or change in behaviour, a message must come from the top level if it is to be believable.

This is no different for health and safety strategies, which often involve behavioural change. But as a Health and Safety expert, how do you ensure that the leaders and managers at the helm of your business are completely on board with your recommended strategy? How can you ensure that they feel connected enough to take your company-wide message and engage all their staff?

We have five suggestions and strategies which will help you plan your approach to the C-suite level of your business and then enable them to positively transform the way their organization works.

1. Find out what everyone else wants:

The Health and Safety function does not sit in a vacuum. It exists in a symbiotic relationship with all the other functions within a business. By gaining a wide knowledge of the whole organisation you can gauge exactly what all those other functions are hoping to achieve and how they are intending to do it. This way you can gain an insight into what makes each function tick, and more importantly how Health and Safety can contribute.

2. Align with the business mission:

Linking a health and safety strategy directly into the core vision and values of a business will demonstrate a clear connection to where your organisation is heading. This will make it much easier to sell your recommendations to the board as vehicles of added value.

3. Understand the workforce needs:

Research is your building material. Spend time on understanding your organisation and finding out how people feel, how they work and what challenges they face. This will allow you to gain a clear picture of the areas for improvement where you can bring value to your business. This is also about spotting ‘leading indicators’, those behaviours which could lead to problems in future – more on these later.

4. Offer added value:

Accidents cost money. Insurance increases, legal expenses, staff replacements, additional training, time lost, lengthy investigations, fines and damage repair… the list is endless. H&S work to reduce accidents is technically cost preventative though, not revenue producing. Think about how health and safety could add value, despite not being a revenue producing function. Your strategic plan should enable all other departments to see a benefit, from smoother running for Operations, money saving for Finance, more sales and increased sustainability all round. The Health and Safety function can be an enabler for all these things to happen, simply by changing or adding products and processes.

5. Be proactive, not reactive:

Celebrate mindset changes and look for those ‘leading indicators’. Too often Health and Safety is only discussed when there has been an incident – meaning it is seen in a negative light. This also places you in a defensive position, reacting in retrospect. Far better to change behaviours where you can, to avoid an incident occurring in the first place. Why aren’t staff wearing their hearing protection? Why do they need to take their gloves off so often? How did that near miss occur? Don’t wait for the value sapping incident, instead make every leading indicator into an opportunity to add value.

Engaged board members can create impact and positive change, making organisations more meaningful. Once you have given them proof that they have ‘skin in the game’ they will be fully motivated to transform the way the business works and improve their operations. But they need you to coherently give them the evidence they need to enable action.

One final point:

Remember your experience and knowledge and be confident in your expertise – with the evidence you have provided in front of them, any board member worth their salt will take you seriously.