Safety culture

Your health and well-being are your most valuable possessions. Many laws and regulations have been passed in order to ensure employee safety, yet every year thousands of serious injuries occur—often with serious long-term consequences for both employees and employers.

Safety is a learned behaviour and attitude; it is a way of working that must be incorporated into the company as a culture. Everybody in a company, from management to labourers, must be responsible for safety every day they come to work.

Companies with strong safety cultures usually have:

• fewer at-risk behaviours
• lower accident rates
• less employee turnover
• lower absenteeism
• higher productivity

Most work-site safety rules are a matter of common sense, but people tend to forget or ignore them to save time or energy.

The ultimate responsibility for on-the-job safety, however, rests with you. By following the practices in this Competency, you and your co-workers will commit yourselves to safety on the job and everyone will benefit.