One way is to improve the organisation’s culture – defined as its ideas, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours – in relation to safety.  The most common way to facilitate this is through a behaviour-change programme, sometimes referred to as behaviour-based safety.   

But before setting off on the journey to transform safety culture, organisations have to be aware of where they are in terms of their existing safety culture maturity and have a clear vision of where they want to go. Undertaking a safety climate survey across the organisation will provide the necessary information to determine whether or not it is ready and able to take the next step. Trying to introduce a behaviour modification programme into an organisation where there is a disconnect, or lack of trust between the management and the workforce will almost certainly result in failure.  Equally, without a foundation of robust, practical procedures and systems to build on, changing safety behaviours alone will not achieve sustainable performance improvement.  

The outcome of the improvement process needs to become part of the organisation’s objectives and the ‘way they do business’. How many times have you heard the claim ‘safety is our number-one priority’ made by organisations that don’t even mention health, safety, or well-being in their company vision or objectives?  

Common pitfalls

To be successful, safety culture transformation should not be treated as a project with a defined time limit by which it must be achieved. This will only lead to an overload of information and campaigns in the push to hit milestone dates, which ultimately creates confusion and apathy towards the whole process. It can also lead to focusing on easily achieved objectives to the detriment of real, sustainable improvements. Instead, regular checks need to be undertaken to determine how far along the road to maturity an organisation is progressing, and the entire process needs sufficient time to become integrated within the business culture, with new elements being introduced at the appropriate time.   

It is important to stay in it for the long haul and not lose sight of the long-term objectives and vision. Many organisations fail to complete the journey because they measure success based on a comparison of accident statistics immediately subsequent to the programme’s implementation.  While it is vital that organisations collect accident data, this information – as a lagging performance indicator – does not give the full picture. It is more useful to combine these data with leading performance indicators, such as number of leadership safety tours conducted, to give a holistic view.  

Programme implementation

Once the decision has been taken to implement a behaviour-change programme, a significant amount of time needs to be invested in determining the behaviours the organisation aspires to achieve. The most successful programmes consider the specific nature of the organisation and create a bespoke model suited to the objectives and environment in which it is to operate. Typically, the model will include the expected behaviours from all levels of the organisation in relation to issues such as communication, setting standards, and risk management and recognition.  

Commitment of the organisation’s leadership to the safety culture change programme is crucial to its success. Visible and proactive leadership is essential if the programme is to have credibility and thus lead to an improvement in safety behaviour and attitudes. It is therefore imperative that the focus is on changing safety behaviour throughout the organisation and not just among the workforce.  

Empowering the workforce by engaging with it is another critical factor in achieving success. The leadership of the organisation must ensure there is two-way communication around health, safety and well-being issues and encourage proactive feedback to help engender workforce ownership. This allows the safety culture to become embedded as normal working practice over time and, when that happens, your organisation will find itself once again scaling the heights of health and safety excellence.