Safety Culture İn The Company
What is safety culture in a company?
Occupational safety and accident prevention are important topics in companies of all kinds across all sectors. Protecting against accidents and protecting the health of employees is of great importance in everyday working life. Safety is created with the help of tools, rules, regulations and processes. However, safety culture as a modern form of behavior-based safety starts where safety begins: in the minds and behavior of employees.
What exactly does safety culture in a company mean?
Basically, there are unwritten laws in every company that regulate collaboration and cooperation. Norms and values, ways of acting and language within an organization shape the actions of employees. This is the corporate culture. One component of this corporate culture is the safety culture.
As a modern concept, human-based safety brings together the common attitudes, views, values and perceptions of employees with regard to safety in the company. Through such shared basic values, which deeply shape and determine the behavior of employees, forward-looking and safe behavior as lived rules instead of formal regulations becomes a cornerstone for safety in the workplace. Safety culture in the company does not mean that a department as a subsystem takes care of it, but that this is an achievement of the entire system, i.e. all employees and managers.
Employees play their part in safety, from pure accident prevention and manipulation to data security and protection against cybercrime, through their daily actions in the company. Modern security culture is more of a habit than the conscious implementation of rules - just like brushing your teeth in the morning or buckling up in the car, it is a matter of course.
The advantages of a safety culture in the company
The advantages of an established safety culture in the company, which is based on people's everyday behavior, are undisputed. This short list is intended to illustrate this:
- fewer accidents
- strong protection of employees
- motivated employees
- high team spirit in the workforce
- fewer losses in production and output due to fewer disruptions and safe processes
- greater efficiency
- high level of trust among employees, but also among business partners, suppliers and customers
The development of behavior-based safety in the company
A safety culture in a company is built up step by step. The implementation of standards, values and behaviors cannot happen overnight. Safety-relevant perception and behavior of people is learned, must seep in and cannot be "commanded". The evolution of safety culture in companies clearly demonstrates this.
Evolution of safety culture in companies
The Bradley curve shows the evolution of safety culture in the company from a purely reactive phase, in which only experts took care of safety, to a genuine interdependent responsibility of all employees.
Reactive phase
Experts take responsibility for safety. There is no real assumption of responsibility.
Dependent phase
Managers take responsibility for safety. How safe employees are and act in the workplace depends on the extent to which managers can assert themselves.
Independent phase
In the third phase, a company has managed to get employees to take responsibility for their own safety. Managers take a step back and the management style changes.
Interdependent phase
In the final phase, each employee takes responsibility not only for themselves, but also for others. This is the goal that symbolizes an effective safety culture based on behavior.
How can a "real" safety culture be implemented in a company?
If entrepreneurs want to establish an efficient safety culture, the first step is to analyze which phase the company is in. This should be followed by a step-by-step approach. Behavior Based Safety (BBS) is a proven practical approach. This is based on four steps:
- Definition of safe behavior by managers together with all employees (based on applicable regulations and standards in occupational safety and accident prevention, but above all on the experience and knowledge of employees)
- Observing the behavior of all employees, including your own (it is important not to give employees the feeling of being controlled)
- Praise for safe behavior (positive feedback reinforces the ingraining of the behavior as a lived habit)
- motivating safety measures (involving all employees in the considerations, incentive systems, for example in the form of gamification, i.e. playful approaches)
Human factors - safety culture is more than just tools and concepts
Involving employees, motivating them through fun and games, imparting knowledge about safety, implementing safety as a responsibility, responding to the needs of employees - establishing an effective safety culture in a company is a major and lengthy task. The human factors in this process are diverse; every person is different and reacts differently to praise, control and guidance on how to act. Therefore, companies should not rely on their gut feeling alone.
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Introducing an efficient and sustainable safety culture in a company requires diligence, expertise and an understanding of organizational structures, value systems, norms and human behaviour. Our psychologists have all this knowledge and years of experience in building corporate culture and safety culture. We will be happy to advise you, provide on-site training and support you in all matters relating to safety culture in your company. Get in touch with us:
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