Page 45 - OHS, November/December 2022

Safety culture is and evident in the way everybody working at or on behalf of the company does their jobs to prevent accidents and incidents. Safety culture will continue to evolve, driven by customer demands, changes in safety regulations and the rise of digital tools. Establishing or strengthening a safety culture requires the following actions.
Empower workers to report issues. Employees should be recognized and rewarded for identifying issues, even potential safety risks, without fear of losing their jobs or creating friction with a coworker. When employees feel safety is everybody’s job and they won’t be punished for making a mistake, safety improves.
Don’t support shortcuts. Prioritizing speed over safety, even if a project is behind schedule, inspires workers to take shortcuts. In turn, this creates bad habits that are passed down while establishing a precedence of “this is how we always do it.”
Expect improvement, not perfection. Since creating a culture of safety is an iterative process, don’t expect perfection. While achieving a 100 percent safety record is an enviable stretch goal, humans make mistakes and those mistakes create new opportunities to learn and improve. Further, be strategic about the way safety goals are communicated to the workforce. For example, highlighting a project’s perfect safety record to date may subtly send a message that safety issues shouldn’t be raised or reported. The message should be about prioritizing safety and rewarding team members for speaking up against potential issues.
Document near misses. Having a record of potential accidents helps to identify and mitigate future ones. When the process is digitized, it creates an ability to spot trends over time, leading to new and improved safety protocols.
Clearly define the role of the safety officer and articulate it to the entire company. Too often, safety is viewed as the role of the safety manager as opposed to the responsibility of the entire organization. When safety is put solely in the hands of one person or a small team, it puts the safety professionals at odds with the entire organization. It does this by inadvertently positioning them as the team to hide things from as opposed to the people that can help foster a safer work environment for everybody. Yet when safety is everybody’s responsibility, it separates the function from the people, lowering the risk of accidents or incidents.
Making a Safety Culture Stick
No workplace or workforce can entirely eliminate safety risks. Yet they can shape their culture around best practices, focusing on what they can control and consistently identifying ways to improve. Creating a stronger safety culture takes time. Big shifts can happen quickly when organizations apply digital tools to document and analyze near misses, spot workforce trends and reward employees for elevating potential risks.
David Ward is the CEO of Safe Site Check In.
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