Leading industry expert, Don Eckenfelder, CSP, PE, has helped many businesses develop self-sustaining safety procedures. His secret? Embed a proactive safety culture within the company.
Safety regulators look to pass new regulations to improve safety performance. CEO’s look at systems and procedures to let them know how their safety program is working. Engineers look to improve equipment and designs. According to Eckenfelder, “All are right to a degree, but if you do them and you have a corporate safety culture that is resistant, it won’t work.”
Mr. Eckenfelder’s approach to safety culture is based on employee behavior. Eckenfelder suggests that employees should improve attitude by working on beliefs and values that predict safety will exist within an organization. By focusing on the employee’s behavior and attitude, the desired outcome will occur naturally.
The use of safety software can help measure safety performance over a period of time. To improve safety, document the details of incidents and safety inspections and generate comprehensive repots. However, the details do come after the culture.
“Culture is most important, and the best way to make the other areas strongest is to deal with culture directly and so change it consciously and strategically.”
“I’ve had CEO’s come up to me and say, ‘You’ve changed my life’, and they’ve returned to their companies and changed their safety culture, for the better.”
