Five Steps to an Injury-Free Culture

Getting to injury-free performance requires rethinking how we approach safety activities, the measures we use to monitor progress and define success, and the way we approach engagement of employees at all levels.

Organizations serious about safety performance often talk about creating the injury-free culture. They know from experience that good systems are necessary but not sufficient for improvement; for sustained excellence, safety needs to be in an organization’s DNA. Practically speaking, an injury-free culture doesn’t mean “zero injuries”; it means creating an environment where injuries are not acceptable and where we do everything possible to prevent them. The injury-free culture is a radically ambitious undertaking. It requires rethinking how we approach safety activities, the measures we use to monitor progress and define success, and the way we approach engagement of employees at all levels. This article suggests five steps that, in our experience, characterize the progression toward injury-free performance.

Don Groover