Strengthen Your Health

and Safety Culture with

Impactful Systems

Every day, employees in various companies from oil &

gas, manufacturing or chemical industries perform
extremely dangerous jobs, including building
construction, commercial diving, and hazardous
chemical monitoring. Yet, in 2014, companies with
such working environments were voted among
Americas Safest Companies by EHS Today.
How is it that despite having high potential risks of
workplace injuries, these companies achieved higher
health and safety scores than others? And how can
more companies get to the same level?
Most of the time, it boils down to the maturity of the
organizations health and safety culture . The higher
your maturity, the safer your workplace.
Companies at the bottom of the maturity curve have a
dependent safety culture where employees rely on
their leaders or supervisors to keep them safe at work.
As the company moves up the curve, their safety
culture gradually becomes more independent, and

employees begin to take responsibility for their own

safety. The top of the maturity curve is the
interdependent stage where employees talk to and
coach each other to identify and avoid risk for optimal
health and safety. This is the level of maturity that
safety stewards need to achieve.
If you look at the growth through these phases, youll
notice an increase in the amount of talking going on in
the organization. The dependent phase begins with
leaders and supervisors doing most of the talking, but
by the interdependent phase, everyone in the
organization is actively talking to each other to achieve
high levels of health and safety.
Moving up the maturity curve not only helps
companies avoid safety risks, but also strengthens
compliance with various occupational health and
safety standards. The maturity stages described below
help companies journey up the curve, and achieve a
mature health and safety culture.

However, the good news is that as the company

adopts a compliance-focused culture, they start
noticing a reduction in safety costs, including: (1)
obvious costs (e.g. workers compensation costs,
medical and rehabilitation costs), (2) hidden costs (e.g.
onsite medical treatment, replacement sta,
investigations), and (3) costs to market (e.g. reputation,
liability, boycott).
The company then matures to understand that
eective safety management can actually save costs.
However, cost containment does not equal
investment. And unless safety is treated as an
investment, the changes are short-lived.
So the question then becomes what is the value
proposition that can transform the perception of
safety management from a cost-driver to an
investment with tangible returns?
At this juncture, the company enters the value
proposition stage. Traditionally, things like Integrity,
Shareholder, Customers, Image, and Growth are
referred to as company values. Hardly ever is safety
treated as a core company value. Its only considered
when major mishaps happen, and injuries are great in
number. This is a reactive approach.
However, when safety is made a company value, it
becomes a proactive driver of decisions and a top
management priority. Consequently, the organization
strives to minimize health and safety risks through
interventions such as audits and inspections, incident
analysis, accountability and recognition programs, and
health and safety policies and procedures. When these
measures are implemented, the organization is ready
to move to the next maturity level in their health and
safety culture.

Safety Performance

Companies at the bottom of the maturity curve tend to

manage health and safety in a rather random manner
i.e. they put some safety controls in place, and hire a
few safety professionals. However, as the pressure
from regulators increases, most companies begin to
adopt a compliance-based approach to health and
safety management. The drawback of this approach is
that the employees tend to follow only minimum safety
compliance requirements in order to avoid disciplinary
action.

Interdependent
Culture
Independent
Culture
Dependent
Culture

Talking Actively

Talking With

Talking To

Safety Culture Maturity

Amount of Talking Going On

Starting Out: The Dependent Safety

Culture

Timothy D. Ludwig, Ph.D. Copyright

2015

Diagram 1: The Safety Maturity Curve

Trusted Discovery: The Independent

Safety Culture
The Safety Triangle, as depicted here, is like an iceberg
where only the tip is visible. The tip usually comprises
fatalities or serious injuries. However, minor injuries,
near-misses, and at-risk behaviors usually go
unreported the invisible part of the iceberg.

Fatality
Serious
Injury
Minor
Injury
Near Miss
At -Risk Behavior

Timothy D. Ludwig, Ph.D. Copyright

2015

Diagram 2: The Safety Triangle

To get visibility into such hidden safety risks, its

important to gain the trust of employees. You can do
this by adopting positive reinforcement tools like
encouraging employees to report at-risk behaviors and
near-misses,
providing
recognition,
scheduling
feedback sessions, and emphasizing the importance of
timely reporting in enhancing employees own safety.
The other way of getting visibility into hidden safety
risks is by building safety scorecards which enable
stakeholders to better understand where the top risks

lie, so that they can make informed decisions on how

to strengthen safety.

Engagement: The Interdependent

Safety Culture
In the highest phase of cultural maturity, employees
are actively engaged in managing safety, and looking
out for each other. Engagement is critical because
employees:
Know when and where at-risk behaviors occur
Are aware of peer attitudes which may impact
safety
Are in the best position to use behavior-change
tools on a day-to-day basis
Have the most to gain from safety improvements
A popular way of increasing employee engagement is
through a people-based safety approach where a team
of trained employees observe and score peer behavior
as safe or at risk, anonymously. Based on their
observations, they provide feedback, and work with
management to reduce at-risk behavior.
Here, employees are actively improving their behavior
not because they have to, but because they want to.
They care about health and safety, and take initiatives
to do things that they may not otherwise do.

ISO 45001 and Cultural Maturity

The ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety
Management Standard, which is expected to be
published in October 2016, is broadly divided into
several steps, many of which correspond to the phases
of cultural maturity that we have just discussed.
For instance, the standard will require participating
members to document their safety processes in the
context of the organization, while also identifying
internal and external drivers of safety performance.
This is similar to the value proposition stage of
cultural maturity.
The standard also talks about leadership commitment
and support resources -- which align with the stage
when safety becomes a management priority, and is
followed by interventions such as audits and
inspections.

Similarly, the sections on evaluating the performance

of the safety program correspond to the trusted
discovery stage where companies are not only
measuring lagging indicators of injury, but also looking
at employee reports of near-misses and at-risk
observations to develop leading indicators.
Finally, there is an increased emphasis on the need for
continuous improvement of the safety programs which
companies are adopting.
There is no better time than now to check where your
company lies on the safety maturity curve. Where ever
you are, the intention should be to adopt changes to
move up the curve, and achieve a holistic health and
safety culture.

The Role of Technology

As companies move from one maturity stage to the
next, their health and safety programs become
broader, and often, more complex. This is when it
makes sense to leverage technology especially to
streamline and automate workows, strengthen
incident capture, and enhance tracking and reporting.
Technology can also help you develop integrated data
models which link your assets with other data objects
like risks, controls, and compliance requirements.
Here are some of the benets that technology can
oer:
Real-time safety risk intelligence
Technology can roll up risk data from across the
organization to provide a centralized, real-time view of
safety risks aligned with business objectives. This kind
of visibility strengthens decision-making, and enables
early detection and mitigation of safety risks. Risk
analytics add further value by helping slice and dice
data from multiple angles to identify safety trends, and
anticipate potential risks.
Improved
Safety
Transparency
and
Accountability
One of the biggest advantages of technology is the
ability to map health and safety risks to the
corresponding controls, regulations, policies, business
units, and incidents in a comprehensive data model.
Thus, you gain a clear understanding of where the

most critical safety risks lie, who is responsible for

those risks, and how eectively the controls are
functioning.
Automated Regulatory Updates
Staying abreast of the latest health and safety
regulations can be a major challenge. Technology
helps by automatically capturing regulatory alerts from
external sources, mapping that data to compliance
and risk categories, and then triggering the
appropriate risk assessments and policy updates.
Closed-Loop Incident Management
With technology, you can eectively streamline and
accelerate incident recording, investigation, and
corrective action. Technology also enables you to
capture incidents as they occur, and attach photos and
videos as evidence.
Ecient Supplier Compliance Management
A scalable technology infrastructure can help you
extend your safety culture into the supply chain by
streamlining and automating assessments of supplier
safety risks and compliance, while also enhancing
collaboration with suppliers on incident resolution and
corrective action.

Conclusion
Building a mature health and safety culture is not just
about meeting regulatory requirements, or protecting
the organization from litigation. Its about creating a
work environment where employees are empowered
and engaged. The result? Higher productivity, better
quality, and greater protability.

MetricStream is the market leader in enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management Solutions.
MetricStream solutions are used by leading global corporations in diverse industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare, Life
Sciences, Energy and Utilities, Food, Retail, CPG, Government, Hi-tech and Manufacturing to manage their risk management
programs, quality management processes, regulatory and industry-mandated compliance and other corporate governance
initiatives.
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