Creating a Culture of Safety

       This phrase is one that’s tossed around quite a bit these days by safety professionals and it’s certainly worth a look. The dictionary defines culture as: The behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. So, it’s the way that we behave. The best operational definition that I have heard is as follows. You show up at your neighbor’s house for a party. A note on the door reads “come on in”. Upon opening the door you are greeted by the unmistakable aroma of newly laid carpet and before you flow brand new ivory white carpets and you immediately notice neatly aligned rows of shoes. What do you do? You probably would take off your shoes and add them to the line up. But why did you do this? Because everyone before you had done it already establishing an accepted and some would say expected behavior for that group of people. In this case our culture is probably middle aged party goers. Of course at some point someone had to start this behavior, they had to be the first, but then someone else followed suit, then one more, and one more, until the “culture” or behavior was created.

     If you have driven the roads of Western Pennsylvania (and New York I am told by truck drivers) you will have noticed a shifting in the culture of driving behaviors. Time was when approaching an interstate; motorists would obey the signs placed there by the Department of Transportation that told us that traffic entering the highway was to YIELD! It created a culture that made sense and was safe for all parties involved. It was a rule that would dictate a behavior that would protect us from each other and create order. But, today you may have noticed on many occasions that the folks entering the interstate no longer even look to see if anyone is coming. They have adopted a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” attitude and effectively shifted the responsibility of highway safety to the people already in the flow of traffic. Note that the laws are still the same, that hasn’t changed; only the behavior has. How then might we get back to that which protected us effectively for so many years? How about a State Trooper posted at the highway entrance? This little reminder would probably be all that we would need to get back to the culture that many of us, me included have left behind.

     Safety is a culture that can easily change for the worse. It’s so easy to get complacent that we need constant reminders by our safety professionals, our foremen, and our fellow workers to remain vigilant with all tasks, every day. Let’s keep our culture moving in the right direction toward an accident free workplace, not away from one.

SAFETY AS A VALUE…WITH EVERY TASK…EVERY DAY!