Safety Culture or Business Culture

Now, to give you, I guess, an overarching view or topic for today, we're constantly talking about building a positive safety culture.

I've lately been, well, for a little while, I guess, found myself really asking or leaning into the question, what actually is safety culture? And I put my ex-HR hat on and go, how is that different then from organizational culture? I looked back on, there was a Queensland regulator guide or article guide, I guess it was.

So Safe Work Queensland had, it was called Understanding Safety Culture Guide, and it defines how safety culture as an almost subset of organisational culture that places the high importance on safety beliefs, values and attitudes.

The definition itself starts with organisational culture in that guide.

So then it talks about how we create safety culture.

And I thought this was really interesting.

And I guess a lot of what we're talking about in the women in safety community for the next month is let's pull what that safety culture kind of concept is a little bit more So the guidance that, as I said, from Health and Safety Queensland talks about creating a safety culture is done through leadership, communication, trust, accountability, engagement, relationships, listening, speaking up and learning.

And my question to you as the listeners of which one of those then uniquely belongs to safety? Because one would imagine that organizational culture literature would talk about, if not the exact same things, very, very remarkably similar.

There was an article I then read from Harvard Business Review describing culture as... being embedded in shared behavior, mindsets, social patterns, values, beliefs, assumptions, and norms.

And Michael Watkins, I think his name was, was the author.

He says, although most people agree culture exists and shapes behavior, there isn't even strong consensus about what organizational culture is.

Now, they've done a lot of research in that space, but they're saying we really don't know what is organizational culture.

So if we've got a fuzzy, not funny, if we've got a fuzzy concept around, you know, organizational culture, then how do we have a subset? And are we creating more fuzziness? And that's a technical word when we think about safety culture.

and if that sits within it.

However, I am not about to say we should throw all of it out completely because I think they're things and this is the whole, I will never say black or blue that things should be in or out because, you know, for a long time, many people were slammed for saying, you know, they use zero harm and, you know, zero harm was in branding and how could you and all the arguments, you've no doubt seen them.

So I'm a big believer in meeting organizations where they're at.

And I think there's legitimate safety science literature that definitely treat safety culture as a sub-facet, if you will, of organizational culture, specifically when it talks about attitudes and behaviors relating to the health and safety of So there was an old paper that I was looking at that talks about the organizational culture is the parent and safety kind of sits beneath that as the baby.