Safety culture

Safety culture is the collection of the beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to risks within an organization, such as a workplace or community.^[1][2][3] Safety culture is a part of organizational culture, and has been described in a variety of ways, notably the National Academies of Science and the Association of Land Grant and Public Universities have published summaries on this topic in 2014 and 2016.^[4][5][6][7]

Studies have found that workplace related disasters are a result of a breakdown in an organization's policies and procedures that were established to deal with safety, and that the breakdown flows from inadequate attention being paid to safety issues.^{[citation needed]}

A good safety culture can be promoted by senior management commitment to safety, realistic practices for handling hazards, continuous organisational learning, and care and concern for hazards shared across the workforce.^[8] Beyond organisational learning, individual training forms the foundation from which to build a systemic safety culture.