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Practitioner viewpoint - September 23
15 August 2023
Louise Ward looks at the tools required to establish a strong and positive safety culture culture.

THERE IS a clear understanding of the important role that culture plays in the effective management of health and safety risk. Many businesses now have specific objectives and metrics focusing on culture, in addition to compliance and more traditional lagging indicators, and in this age of increasing digital competence, there is a diverse range of multimedia tools, training and competence programmes, and facilitated campaigns available for purchase, often with the option to customise the content to fit your organisation.
Many of these resources are of excellent quality, but the cost can be considerable, particularly for ongoing multifaceted campaigns which require a long term financial commitment.
When economic times are good it’s quite straightforward to articulate a strong business case for investment in such programmes. But when faced with a challenging economic situation this becomes much harder.
Safety practitioners are acutely aware that times of uncertainty increase the risk of human factors failures, so the importance of maintaining a strong health and safety culture is at it’s highest just when businesses find themselves least able to commit to discretionary spend.
I recently attended a seminar which reminded me that you don’t have to purchase expensive resources to establish a strong and positive safety culture programme. It focussed on a case study featuring a complex, multi stakeholder, project in a high hazard environment, and clearly demonstrated what can be achieved if you build the right strategies in from the very beginning of a project or programme.
The project team started by establishing a set of values which were agreed by all key stakeholders, from the investors right through all levels of the contracting matrix. They built a common set of processes and procedures for the project, and an induction programme which ensured that everyone working on site understood the values and ethos as well as the processes and procedures. All sounds like pretty basic stuff up until now, so what was it that made this case study stand out for me? What was it that delivered a complex programme of work without significant injury?
It was leadership.
Right from the beginning of the project, the leaders, from the shareholders right the way through to the shift supervisors, all committed to being visible on site, engaging in safety conversations with the front line staff, and acting on the information gleaned during these to improve safety and enhance the working environment.
The project leader spoke at the seminar. He articulated a very authentic commitment to ensuring that everyone worked safely and went home at the end of each day fit, well and ready to get on with their lives away from work. From the very beginning of the project he committed to spending time every week out on site, sharing his thoughts with front line staff and listening to their suggestions for improvements to enhance safety. He noted that this also delivered improvements in culture, commitment and in productivity.
This strong example of visible felt leadership set the tone for the whole project, and the management team all joined their leader modelling the same positive behaviours throughout the operation. There were a few accidents and near miss events, but the investigation into these was approached with the same openness and commitment to learning, which facilitated identification of root cause, and drove positive improvement.
It all sounds so simple, but to deliver this level of commitment in a consistent manner is a huge ask. In my view the key is to set the tone right from the start, articulate and model a level of engagement which you will be able to maintain consistently and this will pay dividends, but set the bar too high and you’ll fail, undermining all of the positive work done until that point.
At a time when so many organisations are facing budgetary challenges it’s worth remembering that it doesn’t have to cost money to develop and maintain a positive culture – time and effort and authentic leadership can deliver significant benefits too when applied consistently.
Louise Ward is safety & sustainability director at G&W UK – Safety. For more information, visit www.gwrr.co.uk
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