Google “safety culture” and you get about 1,600,000,000 results in 0.95 seconds. Safety and health managers have long known the importance of culture – the organization’s values, beliefs and leadership - on safety, morale, productivity, engagement, presenteeism and absenteeism. Culture has been at the top of safety and health issues for the past ten years at least.

Our company has been roofing/remodeling injury-free since inception in 2004. The behavior of people is the predominant cause of accidents and the variable that is most easily changed. Although this article is based on our roofing experiences, the principles are easily applied to any industry, especially those that involve hard labor, high turnover, or dangerous conditions.

Deloitte (2014) describes the modern learner in its infographic, “Meet the Modern Learner.” The infographic shows multiple constraints employees face when developing necessary skills. Many writers and training professionals interpret this to say that people today learn differently. Learning has evolved with the office.

Safety professionals work diligently to engage both leaders and employees. But there is often a challenge: leaders wish their employees would just "be careful" without doing diligence to hazard identification, assessment and control. The result: workers claim leaders are only concerned with productivity and budgets.

Most readers are familiar with the common phrase, “The errors of our ways.“ So why am I talking about the intention of our ways -- not errors – in this article?

Whether you use ISO 45001, ANSI Z10, OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program or another management system, there are common elements. The most important are management commitment and leadership, and employee acceptance and participation in the system.

Does your manufacturing facility have a smoke stack? If it does, your facility also likely contains a valve safety train, commonly known in industrial circles as a “gas train” or a “fuel train.”

A rather simple description of culture is: That’s just the way we do things around here. From a safety & health perspective, the way things are done stays the same until someone or some group, with the competency and power to make change, becomes dissatisfied with the S&H status quo.