The Myth of Safety Culture
For decades now we have heard about this concept of Safety Culture. Companies and organizations across every industry are expected to build a strong safety culture to keep people safe. Ask any employer if they have one and the answer is likely to be yes. Ask them to define it and things get a little muddled. Ask them what specifically is done to support it and they may have a conniption. A quick Google search brings up several million results with multiple variations depending on the industry or in some cases, subsection of an industry that is attempting to define the concept. It may be more useful to begin with a general definition of culture and since I like to keep things simple, I will define it as the shared characteristics of a group of people. Think of the "big" use for the term as it's associated with a country, religion, or ethnic group. The American culture is a clearly understood concept. We can probably mention a few of those shared characteristics off the to...