Developing a strong culture of safety, which includes defining and establishing shared beliefs, practices and attitudes throughout an organization, is the single most important factor in reducing accidents and injuries. When safety is infused throughout an organization’s culture on every level, everyone from employees to customers and shareholders wins. Creating a safety culture has an impact on everything in your company — from reliability and competitiveness to quality and productivity.
According to OSHA, almost 24,000 workers are injured every workday, ultimately adding up to billions in costs. These costs can be as a result of one or several of the following factors:
• Lost production caused by downtime, damage to equipment and/or time away from the job by injured employees and co-workers
• Time and costs necessary to repair equipment
• Increased insurance premiums and legal costs
• Medical expenses
• Compensation to injured employees
• Lower morale and motivation, leading to poor performance, productivity and quality
• Unsatisfactory employee relations
The evidence is clear. A culture of safety has a broad reach, affecting operations, processes and organizational systems. Establishing a positive safety culture should be an important focus for any company.
There are numerous keys to establishing a safety culture. Unfortunately, there is no one item or program that can accomplish this, and there can be many obstacles to creating a culture of safety. A few key factors, which are of critical importance in the beginning of a safety culture change, include the recognition that all incidents are preventable through correct procedures and best practices; the need to think and plan for safety — every task, every day and every job (safety doesn’t just happen); and a desire to continuously seek to improve.
It is also important to understand culture versus climate when discussing safety. When we talk about a safety culture, we are referring to a group of individuals guided in their behavior by shared beliefs practices and attitudes. Climate is more variable. A safety climate varies depending on individual or current perceptions and can change daily. The perception of safety procedures and rules is a reflection of safety climate.
Behavior-based safety
It would not be fair to discuss developing a culture of safety without talking about behavior-based safety, a process that assists employees in identifying and choosing safe behaviors over unsafe behaviors. Implementing a behavior-based safety process without a solid cultural foundation to support it is the cause of most behavior-based safety failures.
The most recognized part of behavior-based safety is behavioral observations. Observations provide direct measurable information regarding employees’ safe work practices. Observers should observe employees doing their routine tasks and document both safe and unsafe behaviors. They should also provide nonthreatening feedback that includes suggestions on how to correct the unsafe behaviors. It is up to management to provide immediate positive feedback recognizing safe behaviors. The information gathered from this process can be analyzed to determine employees, sites or departments and their safe and unsafe behaviors. This allows everyone to focus on areas of concern and proactively make any needed changes.
The most obvious indicator of a positive safety culture is how involved the employees are in safety on a daily basis. If employees have little involvement and are relying on line management with a smidgen of safety representation thrown in, the organization has not won over its people to its safety values. Conversely, when safety issues are identified and addressed by employees at every level of a company as part of their normal activities, the organization very likely has a positive safety culture.
Focus on accountability
In some organizations, people believe a good excuse can substitute for good performance; there is more finger pointing than accountability. Good leaders accept responsibility and demand accountability. When accountability is emphasized, it creates a culture where every leader and each employee feels ownership for results and holds each other accountable.
Creating a culture of accountability, however, can be a challenge. Many organizations make the mistake of relying on a single program to change their culture — a training or observation program, an incentive plan or promotional campaign. These kinds of programs may change the culture a little, but it will soon be back to where it was before with finger pointing and accountability lacking. Holding others accountable has to give people pride. The focus has to be on coaching people to understand the issues instead of threatening and punishing.
The organization must encourage and support people at every level when they hold others accountable; in fact, the organization must demand it. It is critical employees have the support of management and their co-workers. People should be positively recognized for holding others accountable.
For a culture of accountability to work there has to be established times, places and tools that allow holding others accountable. The reason a culture of accountability is hard to change is because everything needs to work in unison to influence change.
Building trust
Trust is also an essential component to developing a safety culture. Even the best leaders can’t be successful if there is not trust at all levels. Building trust requires management to acknowledge employees’ concerns as valid. To accomplish this you have to be a good listener and you must always follow up with employees. This shows them they matter and are an important contributor to the company and the culture.
An active way to gain trust is by involving employees with such things as safety committees. But keep in mind you must train them and give them real work with high expectations. You also have to show them you care about them and their families for trust to exist.
Further, even though employees must trust management, it is just as important that they trust each other and their supervisors. Without this level of mutual trust, they will not report near misses or minor injuries. More importantly, they will not challenge each other on unsafe behavior.
Remember the trust we are speaking about is not blind trust — following without questioning. The kind of trust I am talking about is a trust based on the understanding that everyone has each other’s best interest in mind and questioning is allowed without repercussions.
Safety subcultures
In addition, within an organization there are often different groups that have their own style of management and unique levels of concern for safety issues. In effect, these groups have their own safety subcultures, and it is common for groups to view safety through their own subcultures, rather than sharing in the broader, overarching companywide view of safety. Any company can set up a corporate level safety awareness program or say they have a culture of safety but to be effective, it is critical these values, attitudes and practices are infused throughout every level of an organization.
In and of themselves, subcultures are not negative. However, on occasion the presence of subcultures within an organization can lead to misunderstandings and conflict between groups. Sometimes you may find subcultures that have better safety practices than the larger organization as a whole. These subcultures can provide best practices and useful insights on the unique risks and hazards experienced within different groups.
Especially in our work, we need to rely on the performance of employees at hundreds of individual sites to embrace and uphold our safety culture. As an industry, our collective challenge is to ensure we have the right front-line leadership at each of these individual sites to be sure any subcultures are contributing positively to the values of the overarching safety culture.
At the end of day, however, we must remember behavior-based safety, policies and procedures are all just tools in the toolbox to build a positive and strong safety management system. No one thing can be relied on; all the tools have to be used.
A lot of companies say things like, “Employees are our most important asset,” and “Safety is our No. 1 value.” However, in our labor intensive industry, it must be our bottom line. At each and every jobsite, the performance of people is the critical factor in our success. We must keep our people safe and productive every day on every jobsite.
For more information, visit www.safwaygroup.com or call (800) 558-4772.
