Historically, the job of a manager has consisted of planning, doing, checking, and acting – the famous PDCA cycle taught in management schools. But to
move towards an integrated safety culture, the role of managers now extends beyond this cycle: they influence and inspire safer behaviors from their
teams. The involvement of managers is essential since they set the tone: it is they who mobilize everyone.
Safety leadership is the ability to mobilize people around safety challenges and influence behavior so that it becomes safer. A safety leader makes major risk prevention a mainstay of the company’s day-to-day operations and knows how to place safety at the heart of decisions.
But there are seven (7) principles/steps in how this gets done:
- Create a safety vision
- Share the safety vision
- Give safety due consideration in trade-offs
- Spend time in the field
- Foster team spirit and cooperation
- Acknowledge good safety practices and apply fair sanctions
- Be credible and set an example
