This week, I was at a safety conference with a manufacturing company that leads its industry in safety performance. They’ve gone more than a decade without a fatality, a record no one else in their industry can match, and they have award winning safety records. For this conference, they could have done a victory lap for what they’ve accomplished.
They didn’t.
The head of safety got up and said, “We have done well but the reality is we still have people getting hurt, so we have to get better.” There was no sense of arrival, just a clear understanding that the work is ongoing and unfinished.
I’ve spoken at a few safety conferences and I’m always bemused by the role safety plays at work. If an alien came to Earth and asked what you do for a living, and you said, “I make sure people go home safe from work every day,” that alien would likely assume you’re the most respected person in the company. Knowing nothing about us other than our survival instinct, the alien might think the safety expert was the most highly paid employee on staff, the one everyone listens to and the one people thank.
That is not how it works inside most organizations.
Safety leaders are often viewed as slowing things down, adding friction, and showing up with rules when everyone else is focused on speed and output, which creates a disconnect between the importance of the role and how it is experienced day to day.
We worked with a Department of Corrections system where officers were required to follow a specific protocol when releasing inmates from segregation. The protocol was simple: cuff the prisoner before you open the jail cell door. Pretty simple. The protocol existed to protect them in situations that were often unpredictable and dangerous, yet the correctional officers repeatedly failed to cuff the prisoners. And they kept getting hurt. Why wouldn’t they do the simple task that would protect them from violent offenders?
When we looked closer, we found more tenured officers were choosing to skip cuffs with inmates the knew well because they believed it helped build trust with them and would lead to fewer issues over time. They were making a deliberate decision rather than acting out of carelessness.
Newer officers watched that behavior from the tenured officers and came to a different conclusion, assuming the protocol was flexible or optional. So they did what they saw instead of what was written, which led them to take risks they did not fully understand.
Those were the officers getting hurt.
Every action becomes a signal, and people are constantly interpreting what matters based on what others do, especially those with experience and credibility. That means those signals shape how people think about risk, responsibility, and what is expected of them over time.
That is why the company I was with this week continues to invest in the cultural side of safety, even with a record that outperforms their entire industry. They are not relying on the existence of strong processes alone and are instead focused on what those processes mean to the people expected to follow them and how consistently those expectations show up in daily behavior.
Consistency in behavior is what keeps people safe when the environment is unpredictable. The hard truth is that the work of culture is never done.
Elsewhere in Culture
This week on the CEO Daily Brief we talked about:
Labor Participation Is Down… But Don’t Get Comfortable (with John Frehse) Unemployment is low, AI is reshaping jobs, and fewer people are participating in the workforce. On paper, it looks balanced. It’s not. This is a moment in time that feels stable, but the underlying shifts are setting up real tension in the years ahead. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000761070617 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7hp5n1XDDfQHo1xaHhxNnl?si=c9701d43e2e44406
Engagement Is Down, Stress Is Up (with John Frehse) We keep pretending engagement is high while stress is through the roof. Both cannot be true. The real takeaway is simple and uncomfortable. Leaders are not measured on how well they communicate, even though it is the one thing that actually reduces stress. So nothing changes. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000761273967 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oaBpSkdYbkrDghCtfNVeR?si=ee626e261c9143f6
The Productivity Paradox (with Claire Ward) Organizations think productivity is output. Employees experience it as focus, clarity, and meaningful work. That gap is growing, and it explains why more technology is not translating into better performance. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000761503818 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7b0Hadv1rrJKfyQYcPEpMM?si=0dddf9c9fabe4700
And coming later this week:
What We Measure Is the Problem (with Claire Ward) If you measure outputs, you get busy people. If you focus on outcomes, you get results. Most organizations say they want outcomes, then build systems that reward activity instead. That disconnect is where performance dies.
Too Much Information Is Becoming a Safety Risk (with John Frehse) We think more data makes better decisions. In reality, it’s creating distraction, hesitation, and mistakes. Sometimes the smartest move is not reacting in the moment. It’s stepping back and dealing with the aftermath correctly.