Leading a high-quality safety culture

Leadership is attributable for 80% of the safety culture of any business

Leading a high-quality safety culture is no accident. It begins with understanding employee attitudes towards safety and knowing why they behave the way they do. Concordia’s safety culture survey does exactly that and more.

No amount of safety expenditure, equipment or training will compensate for employees who believe safety is only about compliance. No amount of communication about the importance of safety will compensate for employees who see senior leaders focused on everything else but safety.

Paradoxically getting safety culture right is a powerful leadership tool to improve business quality, productivity, engagement and financial performance. These are all aspects of a business that executives, directors and board members are interested in, but only now is the link between safety culture and business performance is recognised. And still only by remarkably few.

An organisation will never be able to achieve the highest standards of health and safety management without the active involvement of directors. External stakeholders viewing the organisation will observe lack of direction.

Health and safety is integral to success. 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.

Board level involvement is an essential part of the 21st century trading ethic. Attitudes to health and safety are determined by the bosses, not the organisation’s size.

Health and safety is a fundamental part of business. Boards need someone with passion and energy to ensure it stays at the core of the organisation.

UK Institute of Directors and the Health and Safety Executive

Although monitoring and reporting of past health and safety performance is a vital part of the safety equation, this must be balanced by measuring safety culture. Measuring safety culture provides lead indicators about employee perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. More often than not, it is the compromised culture of a workplace that leads to a workplace death, serious harm accident, near-miss and absenteeism.

Armed with the knowledge provided by our H&S culture survey, boards, executives, and safety managers can now know to what extent effective safety leadership, employee engagement, and forward looking safety monitoring are embedded in their businesses.

Keeping employees Safe?

  • Are employee perceptions about workplace safety measured?
  • Do employees think management promotes and role models, effective health and safety behaviours?
  • Do incidents and near misses lead to good learning outcomes, and changes in employee behaviour?
  • Do employees work together to take responsibility for keeping each other safe?
  • Do employees speak openly about safety issues they have concerns about?
  • Do employees think they are going to be blamed for safety incidents?

Answers to our health and safety culture survey can be surprising but they always lead to better outcomes.

Talk to us about an easy, cost-effective way to measure health and safety culture

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