Occupational health and safety: Fostering an integrated safety culture

Creating a robust safety culture is essential in any industry, particularly in sectors where the risks are high. In all environments, worker and end-user wellbeing is intrinsically linked to safe and successful operations, but for many businesses, this can simply be a tick-box exercise, taken seriously, but with a mindset of moving from ‘A-to-B’ with assurance.

As we approach awareness days such as World Day for Health and Safety at Work, which helps shed a national spotlight on employment safety, it is important to discuss techniques and internal strategies that can help reverse escalating accident trends, as well as boost company processes.

The leadership funnel

Safety of course, is not a particularly attractive term. It is crucial that the commitment to safety is championed from the highest levels of an organisation. Leadership must lead by example, demonstrating a genuine and proactive commitment to safety standards and practices.

This top-down approach ensures that a safety-first mindset permeates every level of the company, fostering an environment where every employee feels responsible for not only their safety but also that of their colleagues. Such leadership in safety not only helps in achieving legal compliance, but also builds a culture of trust and accountability, essential for any successful operation.

Broadly speaking, I define safety culture as 'the way we do things around here', however the subject of defining a safety culture is widely debated by my peer group and views vary. There is a tendency to focus primarily on legal frameworks and legislative compliance, which should always be the cornerstone of a good management system, but legal compliance won’t provide a good safety culture if this is the only focus. In my career, I have had the privilege of working with many organisations implementing culture change programmes, both in internal roles and as a consultant. In my experience, many businesses are still operating an immature safety culture in a transactional way, and don’t know how to navigate the journey.

My work is to identify how a business can move from compliance, which is baseline and transactional to an integrated safety culture, where almost every business decision has an impact from a safety perspective. Setting the benchmark early in the process means that incremental changes can be easily measured. You need to know where you are before you can start the journey to where you’re going.

Incremental steps forward

I am a strong advocate for simplifying and standardising health and safety practices, a popular approach with clients. Nobody is interested in convoluted or difficult systems to keep them safe or compliant. By streamlining these systems, we not only make it easier for employees to understand and follow safety guidelines but also enhance the overall efficiency of safety operations.

Standardisation ensures that safety procedures are consistent across all levels of an organisation, reducing the risk of errors and increasing the effectiveness. This could be as simple as standardising risk assessment templates or bringing in a software solution which all colleagues can access. This approach not only makes safety more accessible and straightforward but also supports a culture where it becomes a natural and integral part of daily operations.

Typically, a culture change can take three to four years, and there’s no hiding there may be an upfront cost to bringing in the improvements, particularly at a consultancy level, but it doesn’t need to be an expensive process. My role in culture change is to be the navigator steering the process, so a light touch is sometimes all that’s needed. Incremental changes can make long-term impacts on business goals. Communication and engagement are key, and it starts by simply talking to your employees about what they value most and bringing it together under committees or other methods of group feedback.

Demonstrating this in practice, I oversaw a high-profile multi-site, multi activity client in the charitable sector. It had a large internal health and safety team and was to embark on a safety culture journey following the appointment of a new director. We conducted a review and found that the existing team were very busy with extensive travel across sites, but with a narrow focus on property compliance, with some areas of the business having no visibility or support. By listening to the needs of the business and doing a risk profile exercise, we helped move the team into a different model of working which supported all functions, including the existing team. This incremental change was a starting point towards a desired safety culture journey.

Perhaps one of the key ways safety culture can be improved is to champion it creatively. Whether that is through mixing job roles and departments across your organisation, from apprentice to C-suite level or bringing in creative marketing and comms departments. It is down to organisations to identify what makes their business tick and shape its identity, but also through its behaviour to safety. Safety culture isn’t a ‘nice to have’, it’s a necessity enabling teams to thrive while also bringing value to clients.

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