The Importance of Safety Culture

Safety culture is something that we seem to intuitively understood to be important. The very nature of the words seems to indicate that it should be important.

It is therefore understandable that safety culture has received so much focus and attention.

Surprisingly, there is not a great deal of evidence that demonstrates a relationship between safety culture and safety performance.

To further complicate the issue, there is a range of definitions of what a safety culture actually is.

A common thread when describing a safety culture is around an organisation that places a high level of importance on shared safety beliefs, values, and attitudes.

Unfortunately, it is possible for an organisation to be considered as having a good safety culture and, at the same time, inadequately control health and safety risks.

Controlling health and safety risks is more than beliefs, values, and attitudes; it is also about the application of the body of knowledge of occupational health and safety to the specific organisation.

Rather than focusing on safety culture alone, greater results can be achieved by improving organisational culture and management practices and taking an evidence-based approach to health and safety.

Most importantly, we need to understand if and to what extent the health and safety risks within our organisations are being controlled.

Organisations need to incorporate health and safety into all aspects of the business, placing the same level of focus and attention to health and safety as it does to finance and governance or any other aspect of the business.

Leaders influence health and safety performance by what they say, what they do, and by what they pay attention to.

It is through leadership and improving organisational culture and management practices that an organisation can improve its safety performance.

Article originally published in Cultural Times magazine.