Guide for Site Supervisors

Introduction

These guidance notes will support you to think about how you can lead in health and safety. It is not a complete set of criteria for health and safety leadership.

These notes are part of a series of four guidance notes for:

• Directors
• Senior Managers
• Site Supervisors
• Workers.

The notes provide three themes that you could focus on to develop leadership capability, within each theme are focus areas for action.

The themes and focus areas are relevant for organisations of all sizes. A senior manager is a first or second tier executive/manager. The guide applies to all senior managers in the construction and associated industries, including those in organisations that are contractors, sub-contractors, and hired labour businesses.

Download A Guide for Site Supervisors

Download the Questionnaire for Site Supervisors

Plan

• Effectively communicate with your workers, contractors and senior managers.
• Set clear expectations for your workers and contractors.
• Consider health and safety prior to the commencement of any work to ensure it is appropriately resourced.

Communicate expectations

• Understand the business vision and objectives for health and safety, by being involved in developing these with your manager. This in turn will assist you in communicating the requirements to your workers and contractors.
• If you require your workers to participate in an activity lead by example and participate as well. This means leading discussions before the work starts, including
  • Kick off
  • Prestart meetings
  • Inductions
  • Toolbox/tailgate meetings.
• Use these opportunities to communicate expectations for health and safety practices and performance on site.
• Communicate the needs and expectations of yourself, workers and contractors to senior managers. Advise how they can clear the way for you and your workers to work safely together.

Drive accountability

• Hold workers and contractors accountable by setting objectives for them that demonstrate completing the job safely is more important than completing the job quickly by using unsafe practices.
• Ensure your team can see how objectives and targets set for them will help the business to achieve its vision of working together safely.
• Ensure the flow of objectives from senior managers into your work plan, and into the targets you set for your team.

Resource safety

• Identify the people, plant, equipment and money needed to undertake work safely when you are planning the work of you and your team.
• Request resources from senior managers, explaining why the resources are needed, and how they will improve health and safety.
• Provide equipment and people organising the work schedules, workloads and environment for health and safety to be successful.
• Ask for, and listen to, ideas for improvement.

Motivate

• Hold yourself and others to a high standard.
• Actively demonstrate that you care about the safety of yourself and those on site, recognising that both positive actions and effective conversations about health and safety are essential and necessary.

Be seen on site

Be a person that others want to follow. Set an example for your workers and contractors. Invite your senior manager/s to meetings and site visits and arrange for workers and contractors to meet with them.

• Ensure you follow site rules, attend site briefings, and get involved in health and safety activities.
• Be aware of your body and verbal language and behaviour on site, your workers will notice what you do and what you don't do.
• Do not walk past an unmanaged risk, call it out when you observe potential issues, and where you have identified problems, work to find solutions.
• Get involved in safety meetings, talk about your ideas and encourage your workers to do the same. Support workers to chair meetings and focus discussions on the clear steps workers and contractors can take to make a difference to health and safety on site then clear the way for them to achieve this.

Provide opportunities for others to be involved

• Ask for worker involvement in the development of
  • Safety plans
  • Safe work method statements
  • Task analysis
  • Other safety related processes.
• Help workers understand their collective contribution and activities support the achievement of the vision and objectives of working safety together.
• Help to implement any ideas workers come up with for improving health and safety.

Communicate effectively

Focus health and safety discussions on the clear steps that your workers and contractors can take to improve safety on site, asking your workers and contractors to share their thoughts.

• Listen more and talk less.
• Get to know your workers.
• Observe signs that indicate you may need to intervene. This may be an operational issue rather than a 'safety' issue - but may indicate an issue that you should be aware of.
• Offer workers support and create a team culture that is engaged with health and safety activity.
• When communicating, think about the message you are endeavouring to convey and the information that your workers. contractors, senior managers need to know.
• Think about the needs of your workers: such as their literacy, language and culture [s your communication approp1iate to their needs.
• Talk in an authentic and real way, avoid cliched catch phrases like 'safety first'.
• Ask for senior manager support and then follow up with them if they haven't done what they said they would do.

Recognise success

Be proactive, recognise excellence and celebrate it. Provide workers and contractors with feedback on their performance and practices and ask for feedback on yours. Provide support if changes are required.

Build understanding

• Develop your own knowledge, skills and experience, and those that you work with.
• Support senior managers to build understanding through 'free and frank' reporting of performance and practices.

Develop your understanding

• Identify the skills and knowledge that you need in your role and ways that you can develop these.
• Ask your senior manager for support to develop in the identified areas.
• Take an active role in understanding the work of your senior manager.
• Understand the expectations they have to meet and consider how your work supports them, your workers and contractors and ultimately the success of the business.
• Undertake site inspections and observations to determine whether the site safety plan is being implemented. If it is, recognise this. If it isn't, be curious as to why. There could be a good reason that requires the site plan to be amended. This understanding could help you to improve safety planning for future jobs.

Develop the skills and understanding of others

• Use your awareness of the skills, knowledge and capabilities of your workers and contractors to build teams that work well together.
• Observe workers on site and talk with them to identify areas where they can develop.
• Consider multiple ways to provide development opportunities including supervision, coaching, mentoring, formal courses, soft skills training and networking. e.g, industry safety meetings, workshops, and events.

Seek opportunities to learn

Observe the worksite and activities of your workers.

• Stop work if you consider something is unsafe, or if you are not confident that the risks are being managed as effectively as they could be.
• Investigate incidents, risks and near miss events.
• How you handle incidents and near miss events says a lot to workers. Take care to not blame workers or contractors for incidents.
• Know how to ask the right questions to understand the underlying causes of an
• incident.
• Take action and advise all invested parties.
• Meet regularly with workers and contractors, ask for input into managing risks on site and how they think work could be done safer.
• Listen to their responses and respond positively, without being dismissive if an idea is impractical to be implemented.

Monitor and check

Monitor activity against the site plan.

• Check that workers and contractors are undertaking work in the way it has been planned, discussing any variations.
• Ensure site safety plans have been completed, are up to date and relevant to the activities being undertaken.

Report performance

Discuss the trends and opportunities for improvement with your senior manager.

• Provide senior managers with information and feedback on the performance of the business and the practices workers and contractors.
• Provide regular reports to your senior manager on progress against your plan.

Related documents

• A Guide for Directors
• A Guide for Senior Managers
• A guide for Workers