What does Health and Safety culture mean?
People create a ‘culture’ within every group. In a company with a robust safety culture, everyone prioritises health and safety, adopting positive attitudes. This shapes how individuals in the group approach new events and decisions.
Safety culture means shared values (what’s important) and beliefs (how things work), influencing behavioural standards through an organisation’s structure and control systems. A weak safety culture can lead to issues at the person-work interface, often due to inadequate training or communication.
Organisations with a positive safety culture are marked by trust-based communication, a shared understanding of safety’s importance, and confidence in preventive measures.
What are the indicators?
Indicators for evaluating health and safety culture in an organisation include:
- Accidents
- Absenteeism
- Sickness rates
- Staff turnover
- Compliance with health and safety rules
- Complaints about working conditions
Culture naturally forms within any group through interactions, resulting in patterns of behaviour.
When a new employee learns the organisation’s ways, they adapt to the organisational culture or “the way things are done here.”
In an organisation, the leader’s personal vision, goals, beliefs, values, and assumptions influence the group and guide recruitment and promotions.
How can H&S culture be improved?
Key principles for establishing a safety culture include:
- Top-level responsibility and accountability with a clear chain of command.
- Belief in high standards achievable through effective management.
- Setting and monitoring relevant objectives based on internal information systems.
- Identifying and assessing hazards systematically, with preventive systems subject to audit and review.
- Immediate correction of deficiencies.
- Promoting and rewarding enthusiasm and good results.
Essential features of a robust safety culture include:
- Genuine and visible leadership and commitment from the top.
- Acknowledgement of long-term effort and interest.
- High expectations policy statement, conveying optimism.
- Treating health and safety like other corporate aims.
- Making it a responsibility of line management.
- Involvement, training, and communication to integrate health and safety at all workforce levels.
- Setting realistic and measurable targets.
- Thorough investigation of incidents.
- Achieving consistent behaviour through audits, with safety compliance as a job condition.
- Promptly remedying deficiencies revealed by audits or investigations.
- Management having up-to-date information to assess performance.
