Traditional Safety has always been about logging and managing physical incidents and accidents. And 'Safety Culture' has been seen as the cause of safety incidents with people measuring things like 'safety protocol knowledge', 'incident reporting', 'data collection' etc and calling it the holy grail of safety.

There is no such as 'Safety Culture'. Culture doesn't live in departments or job descriptions. There is no Quality Culture and Finance Culture and Environmental Culture. You can measure anything and numbers will change. Just because a set of attributes are being measured doesn't mean it's the RIGHT thing to measure for your objective. The placebo effect of a false sense of security can be very powerful in the perception that you are genuinely seeing changes by increasing your perception of success by as much as 50%!

Psychosocial factors often play a predominant role in physical safety incidents. We just traditionally have never been looking there.

💢 70-80% of workplace accidents linked to psychological factors:Source: American Psychological Association (APA), "Work and Well-being Survey" (2015)

💢 Employees with high levels of stress are 50% more likely to have workplace accidents or injuries:Source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), "Stress and Health" report (2017)

💢 Depression and anxiety increase workplace accident risk by 30-40%:Source: World Health Organization (WHO), "Mental Health and Work" report (2019)

💢 Workers with mental health issues are 3x more likely to be involved in workplace accidents:Source: Safe Work Australia, "Work-related Mental Health" report (2020)

💢 Fatigue contributes to up to 20% of workplace accidents:Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), "Workplace Fatigue" report (2016)

And equally the current thinking that surveying bullying, job demands, role clarity etc amounts to psychosocial risk management is misdirected focus. These are all SYMPTOMS of issues. To reduce the incidents of any of these it is the causes of bullying, job demands, role clarity etc that need to be managed.

💯 if you really want to manage physical and mental safety for long term reduction, it's establishing a Healthy Culture, where employees feel safe and valued that does anything real

Because when we feel safe we pay attention to what we are doing, minimising safety incidents, don't feel the need to bully others, are far more likely to produce quality work, will performance at a much higher level and are less likely to take sick days or leave the organisation. None of this comes from simply measuring your 'safety protocol knowledge', 'incident reporting', 'data collection' etc (ie 'Safety Culture')

If you really want to reduce physical safety incidents and accidents

💯 Safety Culture isn't anything real, even if you are measuring things and calling it Safety Culture

💯 Safety, physical and mental, come from Healthy Culture. Not Safety Culture.

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