World Health and Safety Day: Do as the World-Class and Shift from Compliance to Culture

Discover how to move beyond compliance to build a world-class workplace health and safety (WHS) culture. Learn from British Sugar’s transformation, key safety pillars, leadership strategies, and the proven business benefits of prioritising safety.

Most Health and Safety procedures are implemented as a tick-box exercise by management. They are seen as a process or procedure to comply with legislation, and rarely, if ever, truly become part of the organisation’s fabric or are considered in the day-to-day running of the business. However, it has become increasingly apparent that world-class organisations place safety at the heart of their culture, and as such, it is integral to success.

Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) is not just about minimising risk and avoiding injury and illness. It is a critical business issue that, when done well, transforms the way that people and their safety are valued in the workplace.

The Catalyst for Change: The British Sugar Story

One organisation that is regularly benchmarked against for its WHS transformation approach is British Sugar. They started from a dark place following a series of fatal incidents across the business. Their approach to WHS wasn’t to improve compliance or better paperwork, it was to ensure the health and safety of their employees for tomorrow and all of tomorrows.

The group moved from a primarily compliance-based organisation to a culture that focuses on encouraging desired behaviours, which can be a model for any industry, small or large, office-based or remote environment:

• They transitioned from a “Have To” culture to a “Want To” culture by shifting from enforcing rules to encouraging employees to look out for each other.
• The Leadership Ripple Effect: Transformation from the top, where safety is a core value, not an overhead cost.
• Shift in Approach: Instead of analysing what went wrong after an accident, they began looking at the behaviours that contributed to near misses.

Three Pillars of an Exemplary Safety Culture

Shift your focus to build these 3 key pillars to create a world-class safety culture:

1. Visible Leadership Commitment – Safety cannot be left to the “Safety Officer” and must be championed by the CEO. When senior executives are seen wearing PPE on site, conducting site walks, and stopping production for even a couple of hours to correct a safety issue because it is the right thing to do, visitors will see that no target is more important than a human life.
2. Empowering the Shop Floor – People closest to the machinery usually understand the risks better than anyone in an office. Excellent WHS involves understanding the machinery, the tasks, and the people involved.
   • Stop-Work Authority – Granting all employees the authority to stop work if they believe a job activity may pose a hazard, regardless of who assigned the task.
   • Feedback Loops – “No-blame” hazard reporting rewarded.
3. Proactive vs. Reactive Metrics – The safety reporting process has traditionally revolved around the communication of Lagging Indicators, which simply describe what has occurred (i.e. incident rates). Industry leaders who have built high-performing safety cultures have learned to report on Leading Indicators that set the stage for action and create a tone that characterises what needs to happen before an adverse event occurs:
   • The number of safety trainings completed.
   • The speed at which reported hazards are fixed.
   • Employee engagement scores regarding safety trust.

The Business Case for Health and Safety

The moral case for safety is widely recognised. For businesses, however, the case for prioritising safety extends even further:

1. Companies with strong safety cultures routinely achieve a range of financial benefits.
2. They retain staff for longer as employees feel valued and safe at work.
3. They achieve greater productivity as there is less downtime due to incidents or equipment failure.
4. Their legal costs are reduced by having fewer insurance claims and fewer regulatory fines.

British Sugar, which adopted the three pillars, found that they achieved a two-thirds reduction in both lost time and minor injury frequency rates over 10 years.

Final Thoughts

What’s striking about British Sugar is that it demonstrates that even the most ingrained industrial culture can change. To start the journey, you have to put people at the heart of everything you do. Safety is not a product you arrive at; it’s a journey you take. Safety comes not from shifting to a “policing” culture, but from shifting to a “caring” culture. The result is not only lives saved, but a safer, healthier, more loyal, and more efficient workforce.

Author: Carolyn Lewis

Source:
HSE – British Sugar Case Study