Time management is an essential skill for those responsible for workplace health and safety.
Tasks required to ensure safety on the job must be reliably completed on time, and managing your time can help to improve effectiveness and reduce stress at work.
So, how can you improve your time management?
Create a health and safety checklist
Starting with a plan helps enable effective time use. Using to do lists can be an easy way to plan your day and organise it in order of priority. Writing lists enables you to visualise what you need to do, and marking tasks red, yellow or green can help with prioritising urgent tasks. Lists can also prevent you making mistakes, forgetting, or missing tasks and upon ticking off completed tasks this helps boost your motivation and gives you a sense of accomplishment.
When considering the creation of health and safety checklists whilst on site, some things to consider including would be:
- Daily briefings
- Toolbox talks
- RAMS/other safety document reviews
- Observations on site and in documents
- Eliminating/reducing workplace hazards
- Managing and conducting accident investigations
A good way to keep on top of planning and staying organised, is by downloading productivity and project management apps. These enable you to track, log, and check ongoing tasks whilst on the go ensuring you remain productive.
Managing time effectively is a key skill for workplace managers and finding the best and most effect way to manage your time comes down to individual preference. The most important thing is that once you have found what works best for you, you stick to it!
Delegate health and safety responsibilities
A good way to involve the workforce is through delegation of health and safety responsibilities. Not only does this ensure the workforce is involved in health and safety decision making, but also frees up some time for managers to focus on priority tasks. It is however a good idea after delegating tasks to follow up before deadlines to ensure no details get overlooked.
Delegation of responsibilities also helps build a positive and strong health and safety culture as employees then feel involved in the management of their own safety and the safety of others whilst at work. Operatives are more likely to then report incidents, take accountability for their actions and behaviour whilst at work and participate in keeping their work environment safe. Ultimately, operatives will make a more conscious efforts to keep themselves and others safe!
Planning for work
Ensuring you can a full and comprehensive plan for works will in turn ensure projects are appropriately resourced. Having the correct resources for a project can help make sure that workloads are evenly distributed and, in some instances, free up some more time for managers. Project planning should also include and account for ensuring that managers have enough time to carry out their required health and safety duties so that operatives can work safely in a safe working environment.
How can WA Management help?
WA Management offer a Time Management online training course suitable for workers of all levels.
Time Management and Unconscious Bias training courses are essential tools in improving workplace planning and efficiency. Make sure you don’t miss out on our 10% off deal on these courses, available until the end of July. Simply enter the code ‘planning10’ at checkout to save!
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