The Need for a Strong Safety Culture in the Workplace

The death of twenty-nine workers in an explosion at an underground mine site is a catastrophic example that demonstrates the critical need for a strong safety culture in the workplace. Ben Heineman, the author of the article “Valuing Safety is Good for Companies’ Bottom Line,” (2010) suggests that “culture consists of the shared principles and shared practices which influence how people in organizations feel, think, and behave.” Today, most industries view strong safety regulations as a crucial component to the workplace practices inside a business. Without a deep commitment by company leadership to create and enforce the importance of safety and health polices, a safety culture will not exist. Integrity and safety must never be compromised to achieve numbers and the value of an employee’s life must always be a company’s first priority.
Effective leadership is a key driver in the continued success of every company and is essential to creating and maintaining a safe and healthy workplace culture. As industry standards change, so does the role that leadership plays. Company leaders make every effort to ensure projects are completed on schedule and within budget, but leadership often loses focus on the role safety plays in creating and sustaining a successful company. Thomas Krause and Thomas Weekley, authors of the article “A New Paradigm for Safety Leadership: Understanding the Role of Leadership in Creating Safety Excellence,” (2005) write about leaders who know themselves and understand their effects on their relationships, teams, and organizational cultures, make themselves more personally robust and resilient in the face of natural challenges and real problems of leadership. Industries are realizing that front-line em...

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...organization essentially comes down to effectively getting employees to complete their work in a safe manner with a productive approach, while maintaining a successful relationship with those doing the work.
Leadership is never a topic that is easily discussed. There will likely continue to be debate over what qualities make for an effective leader. Companies have lacked concrete indicators that point to exactly what role leaders play in organizational functions and workplace safety. Additionally, organizations have struggled to find exactly what qualities make up an effective leader. However, as emerging evidence makes clear, a specific set of leadership best practices can be recognized and defined. This forms the foundation for creating a safety culture in which all injuries are viewed as unacceptable and the employee’s life as the company’s first priority.