A Poor Safety Culture: What to Do?

“Few things happen in spite of the boss.”  — unattributed

An unsafe workplace isn’t necessarily the result of a poor safety culture. There are times when the organization wants to be safe but doesn’t know how. And by “organization,” I mean the people in the organization. Those are the situations where a safety professional can be most useful. By virtue of their training and experience, a good safety professional can help the people of their organization recognize the hazards in their workplace and develop strategies to reduce the risk of those hazards. And because there is a good safety culture, knowing and sharing the safe thing to do is enough. People want to be safe and once they know how, they are. There is no need for a safety Nazi.

Unfortunately, this is not the situation in which most safety professionals find themselves. It’s great when safety professionals get to mentor people in recognizing hazards and developing strategies to reduce risk.  However, most safety professionals are also charged with enforcing safety policies and procedures when personnel forget them, or worse, ignore them.

Volumes have been written about how safety professionals can make the shift from enforcing safety policies and procedures—being safety Nazis—to reinforcing safety practices. Being safety allies. This can only happen, though, if there is a good safety culture.

When there is a poor safety culture, on the other hand, it is almost impossible to have a safe workplace. What should a safety professional do when they are charged with fixing safety? Not hazards, but the culture itself?

Why Are Workers Unsafe?

Poor safety culture is not the result of unsafe workers. Unsafe workers are the result of poor safety culture. People don’t come to work thinking, “Today is a good day to die.” Instead, they come to work planning to finish their day and then get back to the rest of their life. Some do a good job, some are indifferent, but all want to leave at the end of the day as healthy as when they arrived.

So, why are workers unsafe?

For some, it’s because they don’t know better. They have been poorly trained. OSHA has made it clear that they hold employers responsible for providing adequate training. Employees are not responsible for providing themselves with adequate training.

For some, they know what they’re expected to do to be safe but believe that they know better how to do the job. They may believe that their shortcuts are just as safe, or may recognize that their shortcuts are not as safe but believe that it is worth the trade-off.

And for some, they know what they’re expected to do to be safe and want to do what they’re expected to do, but feel pressured to get things done faster.

Inadequate training, inappropriate trade-offs, and incessant pressure all lead to unsafe acts. For some managers, there is only a response to unsafe acts when they result in injury or other economic loss. To paraphrase Sir Thomas More: “For if you suffer your workers to be ill-educated, and their work-practices to be corrupted from the day you hired them, and then punish them for the outcome of those acts to which their training first disposed them, what is else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make unsafe workers and then punish them.”

Recognizing a Good Safety Culture

Many authors have written about what makes a good safety culture. Blogs-writers, in particular, tend to create lists of features. There are two features that appear on every list I’ve ever looked at:

1. There is strong, consistent, and outward commitment by leadership, in actions as well as in words, to safety at every level in the organization.
2. Employees at every level and in every discipline in the organization participate and collaborate to identify and implement solutions to safety concerns.

In other words, a good safety culture is both top down and bottom up.  All of the other features listed to describe a good safety culture derive from these two core tenets. And the second can only happen with the blessing and encouragement of the first.

When You Are In an Unsafe Workplace

As a safety professional, what can you do when your workplace is not as safe as it should be?

If the issue is inadequate training, you may be able to address it yourself. Of course, that assumes that managers and supervisors are willing to free up workers to receive the training. Be careful, however, about using training as a response to incidents, because that will make training seem punitive, which is counterproductive.

If the issue is inappropriate trade-offs, that will take more work. It is hard to modify a behavior if you don’t understand what motivates it in the first place. To overcome the resistance to PPE, for instance, it is important to acknowledge that all PPE poses a burden on its wearer. The worker needs to see that the benefit of the protection is worth that burden. If there are ways to reduce that burden, try to find it. Also, be open minded. It may very well be that the shortcut, or some variation of it, actually is a better way to perform the task.

If the issue is incessant pressure to get things done faster, that is the most difficult symptom of all. From whom does the pressure come? And what pressure are they under? You will need to understand this before you can do anything about it. Even with understanding, however, you may not be able to do anything about it.

Then what?

And When There Is a Poor Safety Culture?

When there is a poor safety culture, what do you do as a safety professional? First, try to address it. Make no mistake, addressing inadequate training, inappropriate trade-offs, and incessant pressure are important, but remember that they are only symptoms of a poor safety culture. The responsibility for a good safety culture does not rest with any single safety professional. A good safety culture is the responsibility of the leader at the highest level in the organization. Perhaps that means the plant manager. More likely, that means the CEO.

There is always a possibility that you can manage upwards. Try that. Do it in a way that doesn’t get you branded as a troublemaker who can’t “get with the program.” But not in a way that makes you complicit in the poor safety culture. You didn’t sell your soul to the company when you took the job. You haven’t sold your soul until you contribute to perpetuating a poor safety culture.

Image credit: Brian Penny on Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ai-generated-business-professional-9098604/

And if that doesn’t work?

Quit.

Quitting Can Be Hard

There are companies that really want a good safety culture. It will be far more rewarding to be a part of them, than to beat your head bloody trying to transform a poor safety culture. But quitting can be hard. You might not be able to find work elsewhere immediately. You might be dependent on the income and benefits. You might be concerned about the impact of leaving on your career. And for safety professionals, you might feel like you are abandoning the employees that you feel obliged to protect.

So, make a plan. Do things on your own schedule, rather than waiting to become a scapegoat and being fired. Know when you have done all you can and leave before you become part of the problem.