Safety Culture vs Safety Systems
A Safety System is a series of processes, rules and regulations, steps and procedures, ways of working. It will comply with a standard from a governing body and can achieve certification against this standard.
You will have a Safety Management System, or a Health and Safety System, perhaps with Environment included. It describes how your company will run your safety systems. You will carry out quality assurance and compliance checks against the system.
Have you ever wondered why large companies with certified safety systems, big teams and independent oversight still manage to have significant accidents? People get hurt, equipment fails, accidents happen.
A Safety Culture is a set of behaviours and attitudes, how you lead your safety system. How do you make your people feel. It’s about trust, psychological safety, just and fair actions, learning and openness. So often, when you read reports from accidents and disasters, the fault isn’t in the safety system, it’s in the safety culture.
What are the impacts / benefits of different Safety Cultures?
You probably have a good safety system in place. The company may have ISO Certification. Quality Assurance tells you everything is ok.
You may have a few injuries at work, perhaps a RIDDOR or two. Product safety is good, designed and built well. Operations are going well, failure rate is low, accidents rarely happen. Of course these failures have a cost to your business, but they are small, aren’t they?
A poor safety culture can lead to reduced profits, reducing productivity, lower quality products, higher absenteeism, poorer staff welfare and engagement, reputational damage, fines, and further accidents and incidents. There are plenty of examples of this happening across every sector. Thankfully, for most of us it’s not so public and dramatic.
Of course, getting this right can lead to better productivity, increased profit (or reduced loss), better staff engagement, improved products, improved quality, fewer accidents and incidents.
Wouldn’t we all want some of that?
Assessing and Maturing your Safety Culture together
I have experience and skill in designing, developing, and improving safety systems and safety cultures across many sectors. I have successfully led change across large and complex teams and I’d love to work with you.
There are a lot of definitions of Culture, but I like “it is what happens in your company when you aren’t looking”.
Working with your Board, C-Suite, Senior Leaders, and more importantly your teams, I will assess and measure your safety culture, see what’s happening when you aren’t looking.
You will get my report on both the feel and form of your culture. Naturally, it will include commentary and data on your safety system, compliance and assurance, but include your leadership, behaviours and attitudes as I see it.
Let’s celebrate the great work you’re doing already, share the successes with your team. Building a plan together, we can then look at ways of improving any areas that may need attention.
The Bigger Picture – “Connections”
iunctura means “connections” and I work on Safety Systems and Culture, Mental Health and Wellbeing, and Allyship and Inclusion. I suggest these three separate topics are actually connected together, and should not different things run by different teams.
What if Health means physical health as well as mental health?
What if Safety means physical safety as well as psychological safety?
What if wellbeing was just part of your existing systems?
What if Safety Culture just meant the total safety of your team and products?
This is a different way, it moves beyond the standard business models of operators/engineers vs safety professionals vs human resources professionals. It takes different thinking, different ways of working, different leadership and culture. It won’t change overnight, but if you’re going to improve your Safety Culture, ask yourself if, together, we could achieve so much more?
