Firefighters show up at a burning building and immediately know what to do. They look at the fire and make a judgment from their gut. Well, if you have sufficient years of experience, within the first 20 minutes you too can assess any company’s safety culture and make a gut decision.
You might be saying, “How can that be? There are hundreds of things that must be evaluated, scored and totaled!†Au contraire, little grasshopper. Sometimes, I think we are too detailed for our own good. We try to measure every aspect of the gnat’s eyelash when we would be better served looking at the big picture. There are only a few things that need to be assessed to determine the culture. If these fall in line, so will the others.
Here are nine items that help pinpoint a company’s culture: