Safety Culture
Creating a Strong Culture of Safety
In our work as consultants, we hear statements like, “we need to change the culture,” every day. Any leader will tell you that culture plays a strong role in the success of their organization, especially when it comes to safety. Culture will either reinforce the changes you’ve introduced or it will diminish them. But as we all have observed, “knowing” the importance of culture doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re building a strong culture within your organization. We’ve done extensive research on this topic. Below you’ll find some of our best insights into what makes “safety culture” work within organizations.
ARTICLES On SAFETY CULTURE
Why Safety Procedures Don’t Always Lead to Safe Behaviors
For most of the last 70 years or so safety leaders have emphasized the importance of safety-related behavior. On the surface, it seems obvious that their approach is the right way to think about it. Following a safety breach, the line of questioning centers around why the incident happened. And the answer usually comes down to how the workers didn’t follow procedures. Therefore, they reason, if we fix the worker and change the behavior, we’ve solved the problem. Right? Not really. In some instances, worker behavior actually was the cause of the incident. But these are the exception rather than…
Chapter 4: 7 Insights into Safety Leadership
Culture Sustains Performance — For Better or For Worse This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Tom Krause and Kristen Bell’s book “7 Insights into Safety Leadership.” We’ve never met a leader that didn’t want a better culture for their organization. Statements like, “we need to change the culture,” are heard every day in the life of a consultant. What is odd is that the leaders who make these statements usually think they are talking about other people, when in reality they are talking about themselves. We know that “leadership creates culture;” any leader will tell you that. But…
4 Questions Board Members Should Ask About Safety Culture
It was 1993 and Paul O’Neill was attending his first board meeting as a Director at one of the largest companies in the world. Just as the meeting was coming to a close, O’Neill asked, “Where is the safety report?” As the story goes, no safety report was planned but the question had profound effects. It set the company on the path to creating safety excellence and embedding safety as a cultural value. Board member influence can do that — uniquely — and it saves lives while creating business value.
5 Essential Building Blocks for Improving Organizational Culture
Few leaders can honestly say they know how to create, maintain, and enhance their culture. At the same time, the success of a culture change effort depends on the degree to which leaders understand and relate their own decisions, behaviors, and thought processes to the culture itself. The most challenging part of culture change is…
How to Change Organizational Culture and Avoid Catastrophes
Catastrophes are a risk in organizational life. From a quality issue that causes consumer fatalities and brings reputational damage to a hostile working environment leading to harassment or to employees becoming seriously or fatally injured. These things are usually a surprise to the senior-most leaders. “I knew we had some issues at that facility, but…
Organizations Are Built on a Cultural Infrastructure
Organizational culture has been defined in numerous ways. To some, it’s about what we as a group really value — production, quality, technical excellence, safety, diversity, growth, profit, engagement, goal attainment, and efficiency. From this perspective leaders start by understanding what they value, then develop what they think we should value. Then they develop a strategy…
