Improving your safety culture can increase profit margins!
Organisations with a good safety culture are more likely to have:
- Projects delivered on time and within budget;
- Reduced levels of staff absenteeism;
- Improved product quality;
- Improved productivity;
- Reduced costs of accidents;
- More positive staff attitudes towards safety;
- Reduced staff turnover and recruitment costs;
What is safety culture?
Safety culture is increasingly recognised as a vital component of business success. Put simply, safety culture is "the way we do things round here" i.e. how well the employees and managers work together to tackle safety issues.
Safety culture has a direct impact on the safety of employees, contractors and the public. Several high profile accidents in the Rail, Maritime, Nuclear and other industries have highlighted the consequences of poor safety culture. Organisations with a good safety culture not only have good safety performance but generally perform very well commercially. Consequently developing a good safety culture is likely to enhance both safety and commercial performance.
A good safety culture includes effective, appropriate safety management systems; strong safety leadership & commitment from management; participation and involvement of the workforce; and organisational learning and continuous improvement. In turn, many of these improvements will have financial benefits.
Beware the safety culture trap!
Often when companies take steps to address safety culture issues more damage than good can be done.
There are a number of costly hidden pitfalls for companies who want to enhance their safety culture and many struggle to find effective ways forward.
Examples of common mistakes include:
- Embarking on a safety culture survey without being sufficiently prepared to comprehend the outcomes, and hence respond inadequately, leading to management losing credibility, difficulties in engaging workforce interest and participation in the future.
- Taking a "pick and mix" approach choosing interventions that have worked elsewhere but not considering whether they are appropriate for their organisation’s existing safety culture - leading to frequent failure and frustration.
- Launching safety culture initiatives with little workforce consultation and involvement, significantly reducing the effectiveness of these initiatives.
How much could the safety culture trap cost you?
Getting caught in the ‘safety culture trap’ by launching ineffective safety initiatives and programmes to improve safety culture can lead to a number of costs such as:
- Increased accidents;
- Inability to recoup consultants fees;
- Increased time, effort on safety initiatives that do not work;
- Increases in risk taking behaviour and liability claims;
- Reduced performance and product quality;
- Disengagement of the workforce;
- Reduction in staff commitment to safety;
- How can we help?
- Our approach
- Our services
- Benefits
We can help you to develop, implement and manage safety culture initiatives that meet your specific needs and facilitate long term business improvement by:
- Selecting the most appropriate safety culture assessment approach;
- Interpreting the results of the assessment;
- Developing an appropriate enhancement strategy;
- Selecting those improvement interventions that are most likely to be successful;
- Successfully motivating employees and meeting their expectations.
Our overall approach, based on extensive experience, is to:
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current safety culture – Our assessments provide you with a clear picture of your safety culture, to act as a benchmark so you can track progress and change;
- Build on this existing culture, particularly its strengths, using a strategy tailored to the organisation – This bespoke strategy helps ensure long-term business success by addressing your organisational needs, allowing you to understand, influence and manage behaviours throughout the organisation.
- Continual monitoring and evaluating to ensure the strategy encompasses both the enablers for sustained cultural development and attends to key deficiencies – this process ensures cultural change initiatives are successful, helping to minimize resistance to change and maximise participation, including “quick wins” to provide motivation for further improvements.
We can help with any, or all of the following:
- Selecting and developing methods to asses your safety culture
- Analysing and interpreting results from safety assessments
- Developing an appropriate overall enhancement strategy
- Advising on the most appropriate interventions
- Providing practical support in the implementation of interventions
- Advising on behavioural safety schemes
- Delivering supporting training and safety awareness workshops – for all levels within the organisation, especially senior managers
What are the benefits of using our service?
Through using our tailor-made safety culture assessment and enhancement services, greenstreet berman customers have:
Increased (performance and profit):
- Employee ownership of safety;
- Quality of communications;
- Employee responsibility for safety;
- Performance and team working.
Decreased (costs):
- Accidents and incidents;
- Internal conflicts;
- Absenteeism, accident related payouts;
- Risk taking behaviour;
- Under reporting of incidents.