This is a question we believe all businesses should ask their staff and management in order to determine what type of “safety culture” the business truly has. It’s often the case that how the business would like to see itself is not properly understood by those working inside the business.

If the answer is it’s a hindrance then clearly there is a need to follow this up to find out why staff feel this way; is it that management is failing in:

• Communication – we often find businesses fail to communicate effectively as to why it’s now important to work safely;
• Training – staff who are not trained or who receive poor training are much less likely to be engaged in a change to a health and safety focussed culture. It’s also true to say that a major stumbling block occurs when managers do not understand the importance of health and safety;
• Involvement – much like training, staff and management need to be involved and need to understand the benefits of any changes that are to be implemented;
• Measuring performance – it’s vital to set goals and to track performance in order to understand the benefits of what you are doing and how well you are performing. But when we do this we need to ensure that what we are measuring is meaningful and that the results are regularly briefed to the workforce.

There are clearly other questions that can be asked but these will help to start the process of finding out what is going wrong.

If the answer comes back that it’s a help then you have probably already covered the above.