Effective safety leadership includes being a visionary. Because of the liaison aspect of the role, he or she is in a unique position to gain a much wider perspective of how the safety goals align with the mission of the organization. Thus, it is the responsibility of the safety professional to develop safety programs and processes that fulfill many different needs, whether they be regulatory or business-driven.

Vision statement

The vision statement must align with the safety culture desired in your organization. The safety culture is a combination of how people value and prioritize safety as well as how things get done. The development of a safety culture or improvement of the current safety culture starts with understanding your improvement areas. You will want to formally assess the safety culture to help align everyone’s behavior to support the safety vision.

Like much of your safety program development, creating an overall vision begins with, and relies heavily on, your values and goals. As part of the process, you might brainstorm with your staff or top management what you would like to accomplish for the future. Discuss and write down the values that you share in pursuing your safety vision.

Your safety vision will evolve throughout your program development process — so it’s okay to revise it. The important point is that a motor carrier without a guiding vision will struggle.

Organizations with a vision have a powerful competitive and strategic advantage over carriers that operate without one.

The vision statement must align with the safety culture desired in your organization. The safety culture is a combination of how people value and prioritize safety as well as how things get done. The development of a safety culture or improvement of the current safety culture starts with understanding your improvement areas. You will want to formally assess the safety culture to help align everyone’s behavior to support the safety vision.

Assessing the safety culture

To gauge the alignment of your current safety culture with your safety vision, you should consider getting the answers to at least the following questions, and others of your own choosing, to aid in the assessment of the current safety culture:

1. Does senior leadership convey safety as a value of the organization and stress safety above all else?
2. Is everyone held accountable for ensuring safe operations, or just the safety manager?
3. Where do we have concerns with ineffective communication or mixedmessages with respect to safety? Does dispatch focus on service over safety, lack of recognition for positive safety results, lack of acknowledgement of lessons learned from negative safety events, lack of soliciting and taking action on driver feedback, etc.
4. In which areas does our safety data indicate that we must improve and are we gathering the right data to drive corrective action? Maintenance, moving violations, over-speed data, fatigue-related incidents, driver injuries etc.
5. Are we reactive to the safety data and events or proactive in implementing solutions to prevent future safety events?
6. How do our drivers feel our safety program and culture can improve?
7. Do drivers feel they can make safety decisions without fear of retribution?
8. What barriers exist to improving our safety culture to align it with our safety vision?

After completing a thorough assessment of your safety culture, communicating the results to all stakeholders is vital. The actions to improve the safety culture should not just be the responsibility of the safety manager.

However, the safety manager and the safety department should play a central role in coordinating the improvement initiatives. Ultimately, leadership across all departments must buy in and take accountability for corrective actions that fall under their respective areas of authority.

Changing an organization’s culture is a process that will take time and commitment to push through some inevitable challenges. When the culture aligns with the safety vision statement, the positive results will follow.