Synopsis
Moving from a reactive to a proactive road and workplace safety culture can reduce risks and prevent incidents, improving safety and business performance. It requires time and persistence, consultation with workers and executive support, but improvements in safety performance flow into an organisation’s bottom line and its internal and external reputation.
Key outcomes
- A proactive safety culture can change an organisation’s focus from ‘reacting’ to safety incidents to preventing them
- It is possible to change from a reactive to a proactive safety culture, but it takes time, patience and persistence
- There is a strong long link between stronger business performance and improved safety, recognising and leveraging that connection can be a powerful tool in making safety an organisational priority
- Consultation on decisions that impact their everyday working life is key to engaging workers with, and increasing their acceptance of, safety measures
- Getting the buy-in of management is critical in improving safety culture and performance; showing the ‘costs’ of inaction or the return on investment of a more effective approach attracts attention
- Technology can help prevent incidents and showing how it can help workers and make them safer in their everyday operations can overcome resistance
- Not all issues need to be addressed or safety measures introduced at the same time – safety is a journey and continually addressing ‘gaps’ results in strong overall road and workplace safety systems.
