Culture is "the way we do things around here." It includes shared practices, attitudes, and perceptions that influence behaviour. Workplace culture is influenced by many things, including leadership, management, and supervision styles and priorities; peer pressure; workplace conditions; and design and production logistics.
In an organization with a positive health and safety mindset, the managers, supervisors, and workers share common values that make worker health and safety a priority. They anticipate unsafe acts and conditions and correct them before harm is done. They engage in injury and disease prevention. Most of all, they take ownership of health and safety issues.
Taking action on health and safety items has a positive impact on your health and safety culture. For instance, putting in new risk controls (such as machine safeguarding, guardrails, or anti-slip floor treatments) demonstrates commitment to protecting workers and preventing injuries. This in turn builds a workplace culture that values health and safety.
Improving your organization's health and safety culture and performance involves clearly demonstrating that the organization places a high priority on:
There are tools to help you obtain a thorough assessment of your organization's health and safety culture. Analyzing the information gathered through these tools can then help identify further steps your organization could take to improve.
There are two basic ways to assess health and safety culture:
Combining the objective and subjective assessments can provide a road map for designing focused initiatives for health and safety culture and performance improvement.