| Safety is about more than programs, and measuring your safety culture is the first step in improving it. If you have trouble viewing the video above, try this link. |
I recently attended a safety conference sponsored by Occupational Health & Safety Magazine in the Washington, D.C., area. One of the more powerful presentations was conducted by Bob Krzywicki, North America Operations Leader with DuPont Safety Resources.
Most of the safety-oriented presentations I’ve attended over the years have focused on a traditional safety engineering approach, such as “find a hazard and remove the hazard.” Mr. Krzywicki, however, had a different approach. He challenged the audience to think about safety performance as a corporate culture issue. He said, “Safety excellence is a cultural transformation that requires felt leadership.” Felt leadership, as implemented at DuPont, establishes safety as a core business value, starts at the top of the organization, and is felt at every level of the organization through employee involvement and accountability. Read more about DuPont’s felt leadership in this article.
In addition, Mr. Kryzwicki said a safety leadership culture can be measured and improved.
He outlined three components of safety culture used at DuPont: leadership, structure, and processes and actions.
Each component includes four elements which he calls the “12 Gifts.”
Leadership elements include:
- Management Commitment
- Policies & Principles
- Goals, Objectives, & Plans
- Procedures & Performance Standards
- Line Management Accountability& Responsibility
- Safety Personnel
- Integrated Organization
- Structure Motivation & Awareness
- Effective Communication
- Training & Development
- Incident Investigation
- Audits & Observations
Those of you who are very familiar at all with the content of WorkCompEdge will know that I delighted to hear of DuPont’s experience and certainly think it’s worth emulating. Although WorkCompEdge doesn’t express safety culture in quite the same components and elements structure that DuPont uses, we definitely subscribe to the same message: safety is about more than programs, and measuring your safety culture is the first step in improving it. WorkCompEdge members can start that process today using the survey included in the module Build True Safety Culture - It's More Than the Incentive of the Month.
I am confident in DuPont’s findings and encourage employers to perform similar assessments of their own safety culture and performance now, before you attempt to polish any rough edges in the culture you may suspect exists. Although it may take some intestinal fortitude to digest the perceptions you uncover, particularly among certain segments of your employees, you need to establish a baseline of your current safety culture at all levels of your organization. Benchmarking is a critical first step to determining where you are so you can decide where you need to go.
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