Workplace Culture and Accidents: How Management Can Communicate to Prevent Injuries

Many organisations choose culture change as the means of achieving excellent workplace safety. Through their safety campaigns, they seek to change the worker culture and re-form the values, beliefs and behaviours of the organisation. This book lifts the veil on the working lives of shop floor employees and the effectiveness of safety culture change campaigns in a large industrial organisation. By working with these people, the author is able to show what actually happens to management safety messages and culture change efforts. This rich and detailed story of the working lives of industrial employees shows why and how these campaigns are resisted and fail. Through a series of striking and revealing events, the reality of safety culture emerges, and it is not what management would recognise. Yet the good news is that it contains the seeds of the injury-free workplace so desired by management. The book has important lessons for company owners, senior management and safety professionals about how to communicate with their workers to achieve world best safety outcomes.