Throughout the body of literature on occupational safety in the workplace, a positive safety culture has been identified as the most critical component for the success of any safety program in high-risk organizations. Leadership support and effective modeling of safety behaviors and practices are also identified as necessary to achieve a positive safety culture in the workplace.
No single, universally accepted definition for safety culture exists, although most definitions located share similar characteristics. Kim Sloat’s definition is widely recognized in safety culture literature and states that the safety culture of an organization is the artifacts (things and written procedures), values (values, philosophies, goals and standards), and assumptions (unconscious beliefs of organizational culture) that people hold in common.57 When discussing why safety programs fail, Sloat points out that the
majority of safety programs involve changes solely at the artifact level. To make lasting change within an organization, efforts must also be consistent with the values or assumptions of the organization, or include ways to change them.58
This is often evident in safety initiatives implemented in the law enforcement profession, where changes in written policies, regulations, and general orders alone often do not produce the changes in behavior intended by the directives. An example of this
56 Ibid.
57 Kim C. Sloat, “Why Safety Programs Fail ... and What to Do about It,” Occupational Hazards 58
(1996): 65–72.
can be seen in the lack of seat belt use throughout the profession. Despite state laws and agency regulations in existence, lack of seat belt use continues to pose a significant safety problem for law enforcement. Agencies that have improved seat belt usage have not only created directives to mandate their use, but also have conducted educational campaigns to encourage officer usage, and random checks and audits to gauge compliance and hold officers accountable.
Research shows that both in the policing profession and in private industry, the success of workplace safety programs is dependent on engaged and supportive leadership that places a priority on safety within an organization.59 Employees are more likely to
adopt and adhere to safety practices and procedures if leaders model these same behaviors within their organizations.60 In addition to refining practices and protocols to
improve safety, leaders at all levels within organizations must take a greater role in mitigating risk and exposure and creating a culture of safety. E. Kevin Kelloway, Jane Mullen and Lori Francis state in “Divergent Effects of Transformational and Passive Leadership on Employee Safety” that “when leaders actively promote safety, organizations experience better safety records and more positive safety outcomes.”61 A
study on patterns of root cause in workplace injury conducted by Dodge indicated that leadership recognition and acceptance of their role in safety emerged as the single most important element in injury prevention.62
As pointed out in the COPS publication Making Officer Safety and Wellness Priority Number One, despite the clear and important distinctions between policing and other professions, “core values that drive organizational life are at the heart of building a strong culture, whether the organization is an online retailer, manufacturing plant, or law enforcement agency.”63 It can be argued that developing and maintaining a strong
59 E. Kevin Kelloway, Jane Mullen and Lori Francis, “Divergent Effects of Transformational and
Passive Leadership on Employee Safety,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 11 (2006): 76–86.
60 President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force. 61 Ibid.
62 R. Bruce Dodge, “Patterns of Root Cause in Workplace Injury,” International Journal of Workplace Health Management 5 (2012), 31–43.
organizational culture that places an emphasis on safety is even more critical in law enforcement due to the variety of risks police officers face on a daily basis.
Establishing a culture of safety in law enforcement is the primary responsibility of police leadership, whose task it is to set priorities and ensure a consistent focus on safety- related issues. Rosa Antonia Carrillo indicates that “one of the strongest barriers to buy-in for safety efforts is a perceived lack of management commitment.”64 According to
Thomas Krause and Thomas Weekley, “one of the more fundamental roles of leadership in organizations relating to safety is enabling hazard elimination and control.”65 Leaders
must “establish an environment and a process where hazards are routinely examined to verify that the most effective and practical controls are applied” to reduce risk and exposure.66 Heather Dilley and Brian Kleiner point out that cultural change takes time
and must be approached in a systematic manner, instituting incremental changes over time. They also state that “it takes one to five years to change a culture so that safe behavior becomes second nature.”67
Numerous cultural barriers to safety exist in the law enforcement profession and include the feeling of invincibility, the need to demonstrate toughness in realistic scenario-based training, the expectation to arrive quickly to emergency incidents, and the failure to seek mental health care due to the stigma of being labeled weak or unfit for duty. Officers are often conditioned through organizational culture to engage in these high-risk behaviors and put service over sacrifice. Establishing a positive safety culture requires an engaged leadership that not only sets safety policy and practices, but also models and reinforces them.
64 Rosa Antonia Carrillo, “Safety Leadership: Managing the Paradox,” Professional Safety (2005): 31–
34.
65 Thomas R. Krause and Thomas Weekley, “Safety Leadership: A Four-Factor Model for
Establishing a High-Functioning Organization,” Professional Safety (2005): 34–40.
66 Krause and Weekley, “Safety Leadership,” 34–40.