Business is about making things happen. It’s about progress, achievement and growth. No wonder the topic of workplace safety, which is about preventing things from happening, can seem like a hard sell. From the outset, safety issues feel like limitations, or worse still, like impediments to speed, autonomy, and efficiency—and no one wants more of those at work.

What few organizations have grasped yet though, is that safety is an essential aspect of any high-performing culture, and it’s also an indicator of overall organizational performance. If you can achieve better safety outcomes, chances are you’ll also achieve better overall performance. So, rather than creating barriers to productivity, safety-related behavioral changes can in fact provide a springboard to improved productivity and competitiveness.

Better yet, most companies will already have the building blocks of this change, but it will often require a new interpretation of company values, and a broader understanding of the hidden safety issues present at all levels of the organization.

Compliance and regulation may be the ‘stick’, but leadership is the ‘carrot’, and to get safety performance right, senior leaders will have some soul-searching to do all of their own.

This post is extracted from Carrot or Stick? How Culture Shapes Organizational Safety, our latest paper on safety management issues in the workplace for the APAC region. If you are interested in the topic, I invite you to download a complimentary copy today.