Safety culture is the collection of the beliefs, perceptions, and values that employees share in relation to risks within an organization, such as a workplace or community. Safety culture is a part of organizational culture, and has been described in a variety of ways; notably, the National Academies of Science and the Association of Land Grant and Public Universities have published summaries on this topic in 2014 and 2016.

Studies have found that workplace-related disasters are a result of a breakdown in an organization’s policies and procedures that were established to deal with safety and that the breakdown flows from inadequate attention being paid to safety issues.

A good safety culture can be promoted by senior management’s commitment to safety, realistic practices for handling hazards, continuous organizational learning, and care and concern for hazards shared across the workforce. Beyond organizational learning, individual training forms the foundation from which to build a systemic safety culture.

Safety culture is ‘How we do things out here’

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