One of the keys to organizational success is its safety culture: the set of shared attitudes, beliefs, and practices of workplace safety demonstrated by workers at all levels of the company (Richter & Koch, 2004). A safety culture can erode by several means, but the top three are indifference, complacency, or resignation.
Indifference can be described as a lack of interest, enthusiasm, or engagement. This lack of interest from either the executive level or the frontline team members can be catastrophic for a safety culture. Indifference can be
expressed in actions, words, policies, and procedures. It can be demonstrated by the belief that “safety is just a cost of doing business.” Leaders go through the kabuki dance undertaken to show the company is meeting its obligations. Like in a famous Japanese stage play, the company’s activity carries out in real life in a predictable or stylized fashion, but it is all just an act.
In these organizations, records are seldom kept, charts/diagrams showing the progress of the safety are not posted, and safety communication is limited. Leaders are not held to a standard or measured in the area of safety. This indifference leads to the second killer of safety culture, complacency.
The dictionary definition of complacency is “a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the lack, self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition.” At times companies seem to make a type of Faustian bargain, trading profits for safety. The leaders trade profits for the safety of workers.
Lastly, resignation or the acceptance of something undesirable but inevitable. There is little drive to improve safety and the company is satisfied with what they believe they cannot control or improve. Safety is viewed as a type of "Potemkin Village," (1)
which pretends to be something it is not. These are places of deception, designed to hide their true condition. They replicate reality in ways that are disturbing, enigmatic, and captivating. In some cases, it is difficult to separate the real from the copy, and the status of truth within these images is in constant flux.
In some ways, a safety culture should be treated as a living thing. It grows with consistent adaptation, evolution, and nurturing, and dies from indifference, complacency, or resignation.
Richter, & Koch, C. (2004). Integration, differentiation, and ambiguity in safety cultures. Safety Science, 42(8), 703–722. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2003.12.003
(1) a Potemkin village is any construction whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.
(2) A deal with the Devil is a cultural motif exemplified by the legend of Faust and the figure of Mephistopheles, as well as being elemental to many Christian traditions.
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