Safety Culture is repeated patterns of behavior—influenced by people, process, and the environment—that contribute to or detract from safety.

It is widely agreed that a key to improving safety is to create a culture of safety.

But what is a culture of safety and how do you create one? Most definitions of culture are values-based and, while this is an excellent starting point, such definitions do not provide a clear roadmap.

ADI helps clients arrive at an actionable definition of their ideal safety culture and partners with them to create a strategy to shape that culture. ADI understands that each organization’s ideal safety culture is unique, but through our expertise and the science of behavior, the following are some common elements of a strong safety culture:

  • An entire workforce that relentlessly pursues the identification and remediation of hazards.
  • Employees at all levels who are equally comfortable stopping each other when at-risk behavior is observed and recognizing each other when safe behavior is observed.
  • Blame is replaced by pursuit of systemic causes of incidents and forward-looking accountability and ensures changes are made to prevent those incidents from happening again.
  • Fear of discipline, which drives under-reporting and stifles involvement, has been driven out of the culture.
    Safety integrated into day-to-day work, not treated as something separate.
  • Pride not only in the safety record, but also in what is being done every day, all day to achieve that record.

ADI can help you define the ideal safety culture for your organization and then help you align the people and systems so they intentionally and systematically encourage behavior patterns consistent with that culture.