Create a Safety Culture at Work
Key takeaways
- Creating a strong approach to workplace safety goes beyond mere compliance and requires a concerted effort to instill safety as a core value of the organization.
- A strong safety mindset starts at the top, so buy-in from leadership is essential. This means company leaders model safe behaviors, recognize safety wins and consistently reinforce safety as a core value that guides every decision, from production to growth.
- Benefits of a safety culture in the workplace include improved employee well-being, increased productivity, a reduction in workplace accidents and injuries and fewer costly workers compensation claims.
- A robust safety culture requires continuous improvement. This means conducting regular reviews and updates to safe work practices, and weaving safety into every aspect of the organization.
Embedding safety into daily operations requires going beyond compliance by integrating safety into the company mission, values and daily operations. This proactive approach can pay off with a healthier company, workforce and bottom line.
A strong safety culture supports employee well-being, improves productivity, strengthens job satisfaction and retention, and helps reduce workplace accidents and injuries.1
Learn how to proactively weave safety culture into a company's mission and policies, starting at the top with buy-in from the organization’s leadership.
Safety culture at work: Why it matters
Strengthening workplace safety practices can help businesses thrive through injury and accident prevention, cost savings, greater efficiency and higher job satisfaction. These can help companies gain competitive advantage.
Building a safety culture at work can help increase productivity and profitability in several ways.
- Fewer workplace injuries and claims – According to the "Travelers Injury Impact Report," workplace injuries result in more than 18 million lost workdays each year, so preventing incidents can reduce disruption, support productivity and improve overall business performance.2
- Increased productivity and retention – A culture of safety can make employees feel supported and valued. This may boost employee morale and reduce absenteeism, presenteeism and turnover. The result: a more resilient workforce and savings on recruitment, hiring and training costs.3
- Faster recovery from injuries – Physical and mental health impact the time it takes for employees to recover from workplace injuries, according to Travelers data. A robust safety culture may reduce lost time from work due to injuries.4
- Effective return-to-work strategies – As part of a robust safety culture, accommodations, transitional duty and return-to-work strategies can get employees back to work as soon as medically appropriate, which helps reduce workers compensation claim costs and increase employee morale and productivity. This may lead to further savings through lower insurance premiums.5
Reaping the benefits of a strong safety culture requires a proactive approach that starts with sponsorship at the executive level.
Take the lead: Foster safety at work
Company leaders set the tone around safety and serve as examples for everyone else in the company to follow.6 C-suite executives and managers can show a commitment to safety by making it a feature in team meetings, modeling safe behaviors and publicly praising employees for safety wins. Here are some other ways leadership can cultivate a culture of safety:
- Get frontline management involved – Train and get buy-in from frontline managers. They play an essential role in implementing policies into the workflow and getting employees onboard with a safety culture.7
- Make safety key in management performance evaluations – Leverage safety metrics such as injury rates, time away from work and safety training completion targets as a central part of performance management.8
- Allocate resources to safety – Invest in employee training, safer equipment, ergonomic upgrades and other safety initiatives to bolster your safety culture.9 Proper funding also shows that leadership “walks the talk” when it comes to safety.
- Set up collaboration across departments – Encourage teamwork across departments, from human resources to finance to operations. This can foster communication and create a shared safety vision and consistency across the company.10
By taking these steps, company leaders can demonstrate that a culture of safety is a central part of the company’s core values and mission.
Building blocks of a safety culture at work
Creating a safety culture involves risk assessment and mitigation, employee training and taking steps to foster continuous improvement. Consider some key building blocks for a culture of safety at work.
Assess and prevent risk
A core part of creating a safety culture at work involves proactively spotting and eliminating hazards and health risks, such as faulty equipment or unsafe procedures, before they cause an accident or injury. A good risk assessment and prevention plan might include workplace inspections (e.g., looking for unguarded machinery, trip hazards or employees working at awkward postures), defining and documenting safe work practices, and preventive maintenance on equipment.11
Employee training and engagement
Employee training and engagement are the cornerstones of a culture of safety. Build awareness through ongoing, relevant employee education12 that includes information on spotting and reporting safety hazards13 as well as how they relate to safety.14 For example, worker fatigue increases the risk for illnesses and injuries – accident and injury rates are 18% higher during evening shifts and 30% higher during night shifts compared to day shifts.15
Enlist employee participation by setting up a system to easily and quickly report jobsite dangers or “near misses” to prevent accidents.16
Continuous monitoring and improvement
Building a strong safety culture means continuously tracking progress and making improvements. This helps achieve better results and demonstrates the business value of investing in safety programs. To do this effectively, organizations need to collect and analyze data, gather feedback, and develop updated risk profiles that help prevent future incidents.17
Start building a stronger safety culture today
To build a stronger safety culture, businesses should start by evaluating their current programs to find gaps and areas where efforts overlap. Next, gain leadership support by showing how safety initiatives directly connect to business goals – use concrete data to make this case. Finally, learn from other companies that have successfully created strong safety cultures and consider how their approaches might work for your organization.
Travelers Risk Control consultants can provide guidance and share decades of experience to help build safer, healthier workplaces and improve workers compensation outcomes. Contact your Travelers representative to learn more.
Sources
1,3,9,14 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092575352300351X
2 https://www.travelers.com/resources/business-topics/workplace-safety/injury-impact-report
4,6,8,10 https://www.workerscompensation.com/daily-headlines/building-a-safety-focused-culture-the-foundation-of-workers-compensation-success
5 https://www.reemployability.com/return-to-work-helps-reduce-workers-compensation-costs/
7,12,13 https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/26187-selling-safety-to-leadership
11,17 https://www.osha.gov/safety-management/hazard-identification\
15 https://www.osha.gov/worker-fatigue/hazards
16 https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/11/1/23
