4 Ways to Build a Safety-Focused Culture in Construction

Building a strong safety culture can be challenging, even in the best of circumstances. This is a problem that safety professionals are all too familiar with. It's not enough to rely on simple checklists to keep job sites safe. Safety needs to be top of mind and ingrained heavily into the culture for it to be effective long term. 

But how do you do that? Steve Polich, co-founder of Safety Reports, has worked with thousands of construction firms to systematize and deploy safety programs. These safety programs have changed company cultures to their core.

In our interview, we chatted with Steve to pull back the curtains on the four key elements that can take your safety culture from good to great. Here's what we learned.

How to build a strong safety-focused culture

1. Focus on employee mental health & well-being

Safety is all about the well-being of your people, which means protecting not just physical health but mental health as well.

“We often don’t associate a strong safety culture with employee well-being, but they are linked.”

Mental health challenges run high within construction. In fact, construction workers are 3.5% more likely to commit suicide compared to the national average, with about 5,500 suicides each year in the industry.

The long hours and hard work take a frightening toll on the mental health of employees. To the point that OSHA has partnered with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to increase awareness and put suicide prevention measures in place.

But to have the greatest impact, employers also need to take steps to help protect their workers mentally. Doing so builds a culture that shows your workers that you care about them and wish to see them safe and healthy.

What can you do?

• Implement mental health programs: Provide access to mental health resources, counseling, and stress management workshops.
• Promote work-life balance: Encourage workers to take regular breaks and time off to reduce burnout
• Create support systems: Establish peer support groups and mentorship programs to foster a supportive work environment
• Normalize mental health discussions: Foster an environment where discussing feelings and asking for help is easy.

2. Make your safety program easy for employees

Workers can easily become overwhelmed by the time and effort required to implement daily, weekly, and monthly safety tasks. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Employers can make safety easy, alleviating stress and improving overall participation in workplace safety.

A key method to streamline processes is to eliminate pen-and-paper processes and replace them with digital solutions.

“Digitizing the safety process usually means implementing mobile solutions.”

If you’re not using safety apps, consider doing so. Ensure the apps you choose are user-friendly. If they’re too complicated, employees won’t use the technology, and it could work against your goal to make safety part of your culture.

What can you do?

• Adopt user-friendly apps: Choose apps that speed up time-consuming tasks and have an intuitive interface
• Ask for feedback and updates: Get feedback from workers on the usability of tools and find gaps in your processes.
• Automate routine tasks: Use technology to automate inspections and reporting to save time and reduce data errors.

3. Appeal to younger workers with modern safety solutions

OECD data shows that the U.S. workforce has been getting younger since 2005, largely due to baby boomers retiring and Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z employees entering the workforce.

Most younger workers grew up using electronic devices, so it makes sense for employers to accommodate them by adopting apps. The familiarity is a plus, but technology today also provides the benefit of improved productivity and morale.

What can you do?

• Provide continuous learning opportunities: offer access to online training, webinars, and interactive learning sessions on the latest safety practices.
• Adopt mobile solutions: Use mobile apps for safety training, incident reporting, and real-time communication.

4. Make safety a priority, not just a process

Creating a culture of safety is not a process of ‘checking the box.’ A true safety culture can improve compliance with federal and state workplace requirements and reduce liability associated with OSHA. Unfortunately, there’s no cookie-cutter approach to implementing a strong safety culture. It will vary from employer to employer and from one industry to another.

One way to measure whether your company has a strong safety culture is to ask your employees this simple question: “What would happen if you didn’t wear your PPE today?”

If they answer, “My supervisor would come down on me,” or “I’d get written up,” it’s likely you don’t have a very strong safety culture.

But if your employees answer, “I could get injured,” that’s a good sign that your safety culture is strong and flourishing!

What can you do?

• Leadership commitment: Ensure top management visibly supports and participates in safety initiatives.
• Rewards and recognition: Implement a system to recognize worker contributions and compliance with safety protocols.
• Proactive monitoring: Leverage data to find potential safety issues and address them before they result in incidents.

Start improving your safety culture today

By implementing these four strategies, you can create an environment where safety is ingrained in every aspect of your operations, ultimately leading to a healthier, more productive workforce. To learn more ways you can improve your safety program, talk to one of our Align EHS experts to learn about our safety platform.