EVERYONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CULTURE SAFETY TALK

There is a common saying that safety is everyone’s responsibility. What about culture? What is culture and how does it affect safety and the work environment as a whole?

CULTURE IS

Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It’s what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes.

WORKPLACE CULTURE IS IMPORTANT

• Culture is as important as your business strategy because it either strengthens or undermines your objectives.
• It attracts talent. Job candidates evaluate your organization and its climate. A strong, positive, clearly defined and well-communicated culture attracts talent that fits.
• It drives engagement and retention. Culture impacts how employees interact with their work and your organization.
• Impacts happiness and satisfaction.
• It affects performance. Organizations with stronger cultures outperform their competitors financially and are generally more successful.

HOW TO IMPROVE ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

To create and maintain a positive work culture, employees and employers have the following responsibilities:

• Individual accountability breeds mutual responsibility, so make yourself accountable to set an example.
• Develop accountability standards to guide behavior.
• Establish expectations for each person based on their role in the organization.
• Use metrics to measure how well employees are meeting expectations.
• Create an employee ownership mentality that allows the opinions of others to be heard.
• Show respect to all employees at all levels and have managers personally address issues of disrespect in a professional manner.
• Open your financial books and help all employees understand company numbers like profits and revenue and to get them looking at how they affect those numbers and what they can do to personally improve them.
• Provide continuing education for all employees.
• Honor all your obligations, both inside your organization and to outside clients, vendors, and customers.
• Hire employees based on character and competence.
• Develop leaders from within.
• Provide rewards and recognition.
• Create MiniGames as a fun way to offer rewards for meeting goals.
• Post a recognition board.
• Come up with tangible, meaningful, non-financial rewards in addition to any compensation incentives you offer.

THE BENEFITS – POSITIVE WORK CULTURE

Openness and a commitment to each other and to your common goals delivers many benefits including:

• Improvements in motivation
• Increased accountability
• More trust and confidence in management and the organization as a whole
• Decreased employee entitlement mentality
• Greater employee engagement
• Increased work satisfaction
• Increased company pride
• Improved customer experience and loyalty
• More cohesive teams
• Greater company success as measured by profit and revenue

FINAL WORD

When individuals choose to work safely and care about the well-being of each other the culture can be strengthened. When a strong culture is in place through living the core values set by the company, everyone reaps the benefit of working in a safer and more enjoyable workplace.