Globally, organizations have increased their focus on the culture of occupational risk prevention, and in the vast majority of more developed cases, there seems to be an almost unanimous agreement that a strong prevention culture is beneficial for business.
In practice, there is no specific or unique model for developing this safety culture. However, it has been observed that most organizations that achieve successful results do so by knowing how to:
Demonstrate commitment to safety
Increase employee participation and engagement
Accurately measure and evaluate progress towards excellence
Let's explore how organizations can achieve each of these objectives and how they can leverage technology to support their efforts to improve the prevention culture.
1. Demonstrating commitment to safety
In the book From Accidents to Zero, Dr. Andrew Sharman writes that change is most effective when it spreads through an organization in a 'viral' way, moving from one person to another. Building a culture based on a strong commitment to safety starts at the top and filters down through all organizational levels. For this viral change to occur, leaders must not simply talk about their commitment to safety; they must visibly demonstrate that commitment.
Leadership involves the practice of influencing people towards shared values, being visible, and showing genuine interest in their work and concern for their well-being. In practical terms, leaders should:
Be present and spend time with employees in their workplaces, get to know them as individuals, show interest in what they do, and understand what they need to do it better and safely.
Speak passionately about the importance of safety, demonstrating a strong understanding of current risks, issues, and the actions needed to resolve them.
Embrace their role as a coach or mentor and provide honest, timely, and valuable feedback to employees through real workplace observations.
Acknowledge and reinforce positive behaviors that support the success of the safety culture, celebrating achievements.
Meaningful leadership requires leaders to develop the necessary skills to connect with people on safety matters at an emotional level and clearly demonstrate that safety is not just a priority but a core value of the company.
Strengthening Leadership with Digital Solutions
Observation is a key element of leadership. As leaders spend more time in the field, getting to know their people and how the work is actually done, they will become increasingly aware of the issues that require action and follow-up. Digital tools that help leaders record critical observations directly from a mobile device ensure that corrective actions are assigned and initiated immediately, reducing risk exposure and clearly communicating the leader's commitment to safety.
This data can help reveal whether risky behaviors are the result of decisions made by workers due to constraints created by a poorly designed system, or if workers are knowingly violating rules. Having this information in a timely manner allows follow-up actions to be appropriate and timely in addressing the causes of errors and risky behaviors, enabling decisions to be based on facts, not assumptions.
However, leadership is only effective in driving cultural change if applied consistently and rigorously. Occupational risk prevention software can help leaders achieve this through metrics and key indicators, holding them accountable for developing the behaviors necessary for success, while showing workers what the company expects from its leaders.
2. Increasing Employee Engagement and Commitment
It is well known and observed in practice that less engaged workers experience more accidents and make more mistakes in their work. It seems logical then that any effort to improve the safety culture should focus on ways to enhance employee engagement. To that end, leaders should:
Focus on increasing worker involvement: Those who feel that their interests are not considered and their opinions are not valued will—consciously or unconsciously—begin to work without enthusiasm, focus, or attention. This means that organizations should look for ways to give workers more opportunities to express concerns, challenge decisions, and propose ideas. By creating avenues for workers to highlight issues, leaders are also encouraged to find ways to increase workers' autonomy to solve the problems they encounter in the way they see fit.
Trust workers with more information, not less: It is often observed in weak safety cultures that workers feel management is hiding information from them, that they are not getting a real picture of what is happening. Sharing real-time data allows workers to assess for themselves the state of safety and where they can contribute. Better communication will promote the message that there are no secrets and that management is open to being challenged and held accountable.
Develop a responsive culture: Employee engagement is a double-edged sword. If you are asking workers for their opinions and what is going wrong, then you better be prepared to do something about it. Leaders' failure to address issues raised within a reasonable time will erode trust with the workforce and discourage future participation ("Why should I inspect if management is not going to do anything about it?"). To that end, organizations should ensure they dedicate sufficient resources and commitment to resolving issues and maintaining high engagement.
Empowering Employee Engagement with Mobile Solutions
Mobile occupational risk prevention solutions offer excellent ways to engage your employees and get them more involved in safety. Tools that allow workers to submit risk reports, incidents, and suggestions from their mobile device, without having to seek out their supervisor, emphasize autonomy while ensuring that issues are integrated into workflows that lead to faster assignment and resolution. These applications also lead to greater transparency, as workers can easily track the status of actions and review metrics to hold their leaders accountable when necessary. In-app notifications also ensure that they are immediately aware when tasks are assigned, so they can contribute equally to safety goals.
Digital tools provide workers with the vital data they need, whether it’s risk analysis, actions, work guides, etc., without having to search through dusty folders or seek out their supervisor, allowing them to make better decisions that lead to improved safety and business outcomes.
3. Measuring the Success of Risk Prevention Culture
There are obvious reasons why measuring safety culture is a good idea: it allows you to assess the success of specific initiatives, provides objective evidence of their impact on key business aspects, and helps to make the case for investment in health and safety.
But how do you measure success in safety? More specifically, how do you measure improvement in safety culture?
Measuring safety culture is challenging, and organizations often struggle with it due to a lack of consensus on how to measure it. Although researchers have been using surveys to measure workers' perceptions of organizational safety for decades, we know that perceptions can change quickly based on current circumstances.
To effectively measure safety culture, we need to use a variety of tools to build a complete picture of what is happening. In the study "Toward a Model of Safety Culture," Dominic Cooper proposed that safety culture is essentially composed of three interconnected aspects:
A psychological aspect that encompasses the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values held throughout the organization. This is often referred to as safety climate, specifically "how we feel about safety." This aspect is typically measured through questionnaires and interviews.
A behavioral aspect that refers to the specific actions and behaviors displayed by employees in an organization to advance safety. It is generally described as "what we do for safety." Organizations should consider which specific behaviors they believe all employees should demonstrate to improve safety culture. Once defined, these behaviors should be measured and communicated periodically, and leaders should not only advocate for these behaviors but also model them for the workforce.
A situational aspect that describes the structure and resources of the organization's safety system as reflected in its policies, procedures, workflows, and controls. It is commonly defined as "what we have to work safely." This aspect is most frequently measured through audits and indicators derived from audits.
Any organization seeking to accurately measure its safety culture should consider these three aspects. These aspects can be measured individually or integrated into a single metric that could be used to assess the impact of safety culture improvement on other key indicators.
Measuring Cultural Success with Risk Prevention Software
Companies are immersed in data, but how they use that data to make better decisions that lead to better cultures and fewer injuries and illnesses is key. Occupational risk prevention software offers companies the opportunity to dive deeper into that data, to identify trends and key insights that allow them to determine what is working and where more effort is needed.
As analytics improve and delve deeper, so too will the ability to predict where the next failure will occur, allowing us to respond before that failure results in a loss or accident.
Understanding and communicating the importance of safety culture is a good first step towards sustainably protecting people. However, companies must ensure that their words are backed by tangible actions to ensure that safety culture is not just an interesting buzzword or an unintended consequence, but becomes a guiding philosophy throughout the organization.
Sources:
Boeldt, M. 2017. "How Engaged Workers Are Safe Employees."
Cooper, M.D. 2000. "Toward a Model of Safety Culture".
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