STRENGTHEN YOUR SAFETY CULTURE

Oliver Williams — Wednesday 1st September 2021

From the archive: Just so you know, this article is more than 2 years old.

Oliver Williams CMIOSH, regional health and safety manager at Ellis

Whittam, takes a deeper look at safety culture in the next of our series of
articles on managing core OSH risks.

When it comes to workplace health and safety, most would agree that physical
controls can only go so far. In recent years, the concept of building a positive
‘safety culture’ has gained momentum, particularly in higher-risk industries, as the
link between workers’ attitudes and workplace incidents becomes ever clearer.

In fact, it is suggested that 95% of workplace accidents have an element of unsafe

behaviour attached to them
(see Resources, below), and that a poor safety culture can be just as influential
on safety outcomes as an organisation’s safety management system.

In this article, we establish what safety culture is, explain why it should be led
from the top, and share some examples of good practice.
WHAT DO WE
MEAN BY
SAFETY CULTURE?
‘Culture’ can be defined as the way of life, general customs and beliefs of a group
of people. By extension, a ‘safety culture’ can be seen as the product of individual
and group attitudes, perceptions, values, competencies and patterns of behaviour
with respect to workplace health and safety. This develops from the combined
experience of the people within the organisation, whether or not it is planned, and
whether or not it is the one the organisation says it wants. Investigations into high-
profile health and safety disasters have shown that a poor safety culture can be a
significant factor in incident causation. For example, following the King’s Cross
fire in 1987, the Fennell report stated that ‘a cultural change in management is
required throughout the organisation’. Similarly, in the aftermath of the 1988 Piper
Alpha oil rig disaster, Lord Cullen stated in his report that ‘it is essential to create a
corporate atmosphere or culture in which safety is understood to be, and is
accepted as, the number one priority’.

In truth, it is naive to think of any organisation as having a single, uniform,

cohesive culture, and many studies have identified the presence of subcultures
within organisations. These are likely to develop where different work groups are
faced with different tasks, different levels of risk and different working conditions.

MEASURING SAFETY
CULTURE
A positive safety culture doesn’t happen overnight; instead, organisations progress
through different stages of maturity. This can be thought of as a continuum,
ranging from organisations that have unsafe cultures where workers are more
concerned with not getting caught (‘pathological’ organisations) through to those
that set very high standards and attempt to exceed them (‘generative’
organisations). In generative organisations, safety becomes second nature to
everyone.

Your organisation will be somewhere on its safety culture journey. In fact, given
the presence of subcultures, you may even find yourself in multiple places on the
safety maturity scale. When trying to pinpoint your position, rather than look at
your organisation as a whole, consider regional, perhaps departmental, differences
in culture. It can sometimes be easy to overlook this, as maybe on the whole you
are ‘good’.

Ask yourself where you think your organisation is, then really self-reflect – are you
really there? Then ask yourself what your employees, customers and the general
public might say.

This maturity model can be used both as an assessment tool and as an

improvement tool. If you are interested to know where your organisation currently
places on the ‘ladder’, our safety culture survey (see Resources) can provide you
with an objective measure of your health and safety culture, and serves as a great
starting point for any organisation looking to delve deeper into the way things are
done and bring about positive change.

THE IMPACT ON
ORGANISATIONS
A poor safety culture can result in:

 Increased accidents due to risk-taking behaviour and shortcuts being taken,

leading to production delays, higher rates of absence, poor staff retention
and personal injury claims
 Inflated insurance premiums – if your performance drops, you are a
higher risk to insure
  Fines – as less than favourable working conditions may attract regulatory
attention due to concerns being raised or an accident that leads to an
investigation and possible prosecution
 Reputational damage and loss of revenue – commercial and domestic
buyers are becoming increasingly aware of who they are buying from and
how they operate as an organisation or treat their employees.

All are bad for business. While health and safety is often viewed as sitting outside
core business objectives, many organisations have found improving workplace
standards provides financial benefits. Investments are repaid by, for example:

 Enhanced productivity and efficiency

 Reduced staff absence
 Reduced staff turnover.

Contrary to what some might believe, cost-effective investment in health and

safety is as valuable as any other investment in your company, and tackling the
causes of accidental losses should not be viewed as an unnecessary overhead but
rather an investment in your business. Indeed, a combination of reducing accident
costs and prevention costs can lead to dramatic savings in your company’s bottom
line.

This was the key message of IOSH’s The healthy profit report (see Resources),
which aimed to demonstrate to organisations that good health and safety
management doesn’t just save lives, but money too. It should never be about just
ticking a box to say, ‘I’ve investigated that’, then moving on – really think about
the value this can bring.

Again, all of this comes back to the culture of the organisation, as only by getting
that right will you see positive results.

THE IMPACT ON
PEOPLE
Business benefits aside, it’s important to acknowledge the impact that a poor safety
culture can have on people, as they are the outcome of your safety culture and
leadership.

Everyone should return home at the end of the day in the same condition they left
home that morning. Unfortunately, 142 people in Great Britain died as a result of
their work last year, according to the GB Health and Safety Executive (HSE) (see
Resources). It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that a workplace accident can
have devastating effects on not only the injured person but their family too.
Crucially, in his 1943 paper A theory of human motivation, the psychologist
Abraham Maslow identified safety as the second of five basic human needs, just
behind physiological needs such as food, water and shelter. Without satisfying this
need for safety, we cannot satisfy more complex needs, and cannot reach our
potential and achieve self-fulfilment and growth. This is a lesson many managers
have taken on board when trying to motivate staff.

THE ROLE OF LEADERS

The most successful organisations lead by example, ensuring they take a top-down
approach to health and safety.

In fact, the HSE points out that although many companies use the term ‘safety
culture’ to refer to the inclination of their employees to comply with rules or act
safely or unsafely, it is the culture and style of management that is even more
significant (see Resources). For example, managers may:

 Have a natural, unconscious bias for production over safety

 Tend to focus on the short-term and be highly reactive
 Ignore health and safety policies and procedures that are in place.

These attitudes and behaviours can filter down to employees, and encourage apathy
and risk-taking behaviour. It is therefore essential that leaders walk the talk,
embody the organisation’s values through their individual behaviour and
management practice, and understand the power they have to positively (and
negatively) influence health and safety culture.

LEAD FROM THE TOP

On its website, the HSE talks about the importance of directors and boards leading
and promoting health and safety (see Resources) and quotes several health and
safety leaders in the public and private sectors. One says: ‘Board members who do
not show leadership in this area are failing in their duty as directors and their moral
duty, and are damaging their organisation.’

Indeed, the board should:

 Set the direction for effective health and safety management

 Establish a health and safety policy that is much more than a document (it
should be an integral part of your organisation’s culture, values and
performance standards)
 Take the lead in ensuring the communication of health and safety duties and
benefits throughout
 the organisation.

Examples of good practice include:

 Ensuring health and safety appears on the agenda for board meetings on a
regular basis
 Appointing a board member as the health and safety champion
 Appointing a health and safety director to send a strong signal that the issue
is being taken seriously and that its strategic importance is understood
 Setting targets to define what the board is seeking to achieve
 Appointing a non-executive director to act as a scrutineer – ensuring the
processes to support boards facing significant health and safety risks are
robust.

In addition, those responsible for leading your safety culture should possess certain
qualities.
A good leader:

 Has the motivation to prevent harm

 Ensures a safe place of work for staff
 Has respect for the law and regulations
 Maintains and develops skills, knowledge and experience in themselves and
others
 Is objective, fair and reasonable
 Takes responsibility for his own and others’ actions
 Acts with conviction
 Provides clear direction and communicates effectively
 Discharges a duty of care to customers, clients and staff.

THREE THINGS YOU

CAN DO NOW
1. Consult with and involve your workforce

Participation by employees supports risk control by encouraging their ownership of

health and safety policies. It establishes an understanding that the organisation, and
people working in it, benefit from good health and safety performance. Pooling
knowledge and experience through participation, commitment and involvement
means health and safety becomes everybody’s business. Moreover, successful
organisations often go further than what is strictly required by law and actively
encourage and support consultation in different ways. Consider involving
employees at all levels in activities such as:

Helping to set health and safety performance standards

 Devising operating systems, procedures and instructions for risk control

 Monitoring and auditing
 The chance to participate in ad hoc problem-solving teams.
2. Conduct benchmarking

The objective of benchmarking is to learn from others, uncover your organisation’s

strengths and weaknesses
in the process, and then act on the lessons learned – in turn leading to real
improvement.

 Benchmark internally and externally within your industry, as this will really
challenge your perception of what good looks like
 If you have past reference points to score against, use those; if you
don’t, it’s useful to look externally within
 your industry. Also consider those subcultures and benchmark against the
appropriate industry
 Consider how your safety performance impacts on your culture, engage with
your workforce, and benchmark your result
 Look at the return rate on your staff survey; this is a good indicator of
engagement across your business and could be a good place to start.

3. Be dynamic

Safety culture is dynamic – it’s about reflecting on and reacting to experience,

changes in organisations and expectations of both internal and external
stakeholders. The last 12 months have emphasised the need to be dynamic in how
we manage change, and safety culture is no different.

Finally, above all, remember your people: safety culture is as broad and diverse as
your workforce, with different backgrounds, cultures and tolerances. People are
unique and, as such, your safety culture approach
needs to be too.

Image Credit | Shutterstock