Safety culture ambitions should be consistent with the context

When it comes to safety culture it is natural to want to know what best practices are, so that each company can adapt them to its needs. In reality, however, there is no universal program, or magic bullet that makes any particular organization a safety culture champion.

Setting out safety culture goals means taking into account multiple parameters: the history of the company, its sector of activity, the socio-economic context, the location, and the resources that the company can commit. Each goal, and each strategy is, therefore, specific to each organization.

Of course, it is always useful to pick and choose good practices from elsewhere. But external benchmarks always need to be contextualized to the day-to-day reality of the business.

In her Thoughts on Safety Culture, Dounia Tazi takes us into the world of boxing. She argues that a successful safety culture means, first and foremost, boxing in your weight division. Companies must go beyond pre-prepared recipes, and define their own, made-to-measure safety culture goals, as a function of their context.