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Safety Culture??
What is a safety culture? How is this safety culture achieved? How do you handle adversity while trying to obtain this culture? What do you mean by building a safety culture from the ground up? These are the some of the questions that I have received recently when talking with people that have reached out to me through different facilities of the hiring process or just casual conversations that strike up between myself and other safety individuals. You may be wondering why they are asking me these types of questions. Well, see I decided to place on my description section for my current role that I was tasked with building a safety culture from the ground up. Was this a bad thing? Had I really been prepared to answer what a safety culture meant to me? I can tell you the first time I was asked this question, I was not prepared! Boy did I look like the fool.... However, it got me thinking. I had listed something on my description section that I felt passionate about but hadn't put much stock in how to describe this to others. This caused me to take a deep dive into myself and what other safety professionals I knew felt about what a safety culture was to them. I received many answers from an organized written program to employees doing what is expected of them even to having a great program to where employees share their near misses and injuries with ease. Employee's share their experiences on the floor with ease? That’s it I thought! We need the employees to be the culture. I had been doing something and felt passionate about this and never thought of it in this way. We need employees to be the culture through expectations, reporting, and training others. Well how do we do that! How do we as safety professionals build that culture!!!! I believe we do this through our everyday interactions on the floor. We must take the time to build relationships with the people we work with. As that relationship is nurtured and grows, the culture then grows. As one individual buys in and begins to nurture the same relationship with others you will then see a domino effect within the work force. As this occurs you will see everyone's kayaks begin to turn around and flow with the current instead of against the current. This is how we achieve a positive safety culture that will lead to compliance!!