How to get a health and safety culture that sticks

The health and safety culture of an organisation is the way that people manage health and safety in the organisation, their attitudes to health and safety and their perceptions of it. Simply put, the health and safety culture of an organisation is the way that organisations do things. Organisational health and safety culture is a set of values, perceptions and interactions that make up the whole picture.

An organisation’s leadership team of has a vital role to play in developing a positive health and safety culture. As its members set the tone, their personalities, values and attitudes will affect the whole organisation. Therefore, by its nature a culture in an organisation will probably have existed for some time and will generally be quite resistant to change.

What are the hallmarks of a good health and safety culture?

The best health and safety cultures involve every level of the organisation. They instil a strong commitment to health and safety, reduce accidents and ill health and improve the bottom line. When health and safety is naturally part of the organisation’s way of life, everyone wins.

An organisation’s health and safety culture will have both internal and external traits and will be known by employees. Employees should be able to describe its characteristics. In order to know what level the organisation is at, practitioners can carry out a culture or climate survey of the organisation.

There are many different tools available on the market to measure culture. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) uses the “culture ladder” to help organisations identify where they are.

Pathological cultures: these believe that individuals cause accidents. They implement only what is mandatory, including required checks and audits. Pathological organisations respond to clear regulatory requirements, if enforced, and implement health and safety programmes only when they need to do so to avoid prosecution. As individuals are generally blamed for incidents, health and safety management systems are unlikely to be adopted.

Reactive cultures: these consider health and safety to be important but believe that most problems lie within the lower levels of the workforce. Organisational and individual health and safety management skills are basic and the tools they use are simple.

Calculative cultures: these value systems for managing health and safety performance and use a large number of tools and training. They focus on tools and analyse metrics rather than the effectiveness of the tool; for example, the number of people trained, rather than assessing their competence.

Proactive cultures: these consider health and safety to be a core value. The leadership team and other managers genuinely care for the health and well-being of the staff and contractors. They understand the role of management system failures as primary causes of incidents and have performance targets in place. The organisation uses tools that simplify work processes and support line management as well as the workforce. The focus is on continuous improvement.

Generative cultures: these realise the benefit of health and safety management on their entire operating environment, and health and safety is just part of what they do on a daily basis.

So, how can a health and safety practitioner go about changing the health and safety culture of an organisation if it does not promote health and safety positively? And how can he or she make the changes stick?

Planned change

Health and safety culture can develop randomly, or in a planned fashion. If a health and safety practitioner wants to make lasting changes to the culture within the organisation, a planned approach is needed. Practitioners should define the scope of change and who to focus on. For example, should it be the team, a department, a division or the whole company?

Using behavioural safety can help to launch new methods on the shop floor. Using positive reinforcement and talking to people about how they can make the safe way the easiest way can have a huge impact. Making structural and process changes to fit with the culture that you are trying to create will help to embed it more effectively, reduce paperwork and get better results.

The health and safety culture must have the primary goal of supporting the business and making it stronger. Health and safety should be linked to company values and strategic objectives – it will increase the likelihood of success. Practitioners will need to track and measure results and make sure that the culture change is data driven. Having an “all-singing, all-dancing” behavioural safety system means nothing unless it is reducing your accident and ill health statistics.

Use senior role models

Promotion to, and the behaviour of, the senior management in the organisation should reflect the desired behaviours of the organisation’s health and safety culture. Leading by example is a key factor in determining the culture of the organisation. Senior people can reinforce the culture by using storytelling to create a history of successful health and safety.

Using senior managers to mentor their juniors will also help younger employees to fit their behaviour to the cultural expectations of the organisation.

There needs to be agreement from both senior managers and employees within the existing culture that there is a need for change.

Involve existing employees

It is well known that, if employees are given the opportunity to participate in making decisions that affect their jobs, they become more actively involved in the work they do. Getting employees more involved in creating the health and safety culture has three main psychological benefits.

1. Employees become more focused on their work: they are more alert, active and prepared to perform; they do not become easily distracted and therefore are less likely to make errors that may lead to an accident.

2. Participation motivates employees to contribute: a motivated employee will balance their own and the organisation’s needs. If their job is designed to give them intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, then they will be more committed to the organisation and therefore the goals that the organisation sets around health and safety.

3. Participating in decision-making can help employees to become more accountable: this will help them to achieve the health and safety goals of the organisation and therefore feel safer at work.

Embedding the health and safety culture from the start

The current culture will have been maintained as new employees are socialised into the organisation. The process begins before the employee is even appointed: it starts at the recruitment and selection processes, so selection criteria should reflect the desired culture. For example, interviewers could ask how the recruit would deal with health and safety issues, make sure interviewees are aware of the fire procedure on arrival at the premises and make available any personal protective equipment (PPE) or safety information.

At this stage, potential employees use the process as a two-way street to get a realistic preview of jobs and the organisation through their experience of the interview process.

On starting work, the new recruit should be provided with appropriate training, information and supervision. There should be tailored rewards for good health and safety performance, and health and safety objectives should form part of the performance appraisal system.

The vision, values and strategic objectives of the organisation should be explained and the link made to health and safety.

Using a mentoring and buddy programme can also help to instil a good health and safety culture – but only if positive role models are used.

Ensure that health and safety is linked to job satisfaction and that the organisation communicates the standard it requires.

Conclusions

Developing a positive health and safety culture with employees has many benefits.

• It demonstrates that the organisation cares about employees and goes above and beyond safety alone.

• It shows employees that there is a strong connection between their jobs and the organisation’s actions.

• It creates opportunities for employees to achieve their personal goals — linking the employees’ performance objectives to health and safety, and ensuring that any health and safety responsibilities that they are given are meaningful to them and can help them gain experience.

• It gives employees intrinsic rewards — these are the personal gains for employees from doing their jobs, for example feeling competent, craftsmanship, pride and satisfaction. This includes providing staff with opportunities to make decisions about their PPE, giving them an opportunity to study for a meaningful qualification such as the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health’s Managing Safely, or empowering them by giving them control over how they do their work.

• It allows the organisation and employees to work together to set health and safety goals. Making sure that the goals are valued by employees by adding them to performance appraisals and actively encouraging employees to want to develop, be committed and to progress in the organisation.

Identifying where an organisation is on the health and safety culture ladder can allow it to progress and continually improve. The three key ingredients to success are: convincing the senior management team to “walk the talk”, engaging with employees, and getting new recruits on board from the start