May 2009 Safety Message

What is safety culture? Safety culture can be defined as the outcome of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions and competencies including behaviour that determines the commitment to our health & safety management system. A well developed and committed safety culture with effective safety management, builds trust, grows personal responsibility and encourages accountability. These are probably three of the most important elements in developing safety excellence.

Three areas of safety excellence that need to be satisfied to create a strong safety culture that can help achieve excellence in safety performance include committed leadership, structure and action. We need everyone to demonstrate leadership and commitment to safety and without exception, regardless of the performance side of our business. As leaders, we must demonstrate through commitment and actions that the safety and health of all employees is a core value. When we talk about structure, we mean everyone must be involved and engaged in safety. Our employees must be truly engaged through participation, we must have accountability in management and line supervision, and the need for trained and supportive departments are all components in a company’s structure that need to be integrated and along with employee motivation can help enable a strong safety management system. The third requirement for a strong safety culture is action. This includes the levels of activities we perform daily to demonstrate our belief that safety is a core value and that it is perceived to be more important than production. These activities include our ability to be consistent in clear communication among all levels, our actions in training and personnel development, employee participation and ownership from supervision and management in audits and observations.

In order to improve in your areas of safety performance you must increase the strength of your safety culture. Stop talking numbers and talk names. Stop talking from the brain and talk from the heart. Show you care each and every day and through a strengthened safety culture we can achieve world class safety and help in our goal of zero injury.