unpacking the safety experience
In this edition of Massive Insights, we’re diving deep — exploring the safety experience in Australian high-risk industries.
We’re looking at the current state of the safety experience, analysing the key factors that shape it, and more importantly — suggesting opportunities for leaders like you to use the insights to improve the safety experience within your organisation.
In the beginning…
Just joking.
We won’t bore you with our origin story (which actually isn’t that boring, but time and place, friends. Time and place). However, it is worth spending the briefest moment to explain how and why we’ve come to care so much about the safety experience.
With nearly two decades under our business belts, we’ve worked with some of the world’s most forward-thinking safety leaders.
From communications campaigns and learning experiences to full-blown leadership programs, our approach has always been to use human-centred design to raise awareness, lift engagement, embed knowledge and support leadership, to ultimately influence the way people experience safety.
And along the way, we’ve come to realise not only how important a role the safety experience plays in people’s work, but that every great safety leader we’ve worked with has shared a desire to improve the safety experience for their people.
So… what is the safety experience?
An excellent question, we’re glad you asked.
Truth be told, though, there really isn’t one perfect answer or definition. The closest we’ve landed on would be to describe it as the collective feelings, beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes people have towards safety in their workplace.
And it’s so much more than just a vibe.
Safety sentiment — people’s experience of safety — is every bit as valid a metric as any other leading or lagging indicator. Think: incidents/events, LTIR, TRIFR, DART (in the US), ART, risk controls, HIPOs, etc.
The safety experience encapsulates how people feel about safety in the workplace.
When it’s a positive experience, there’s greater trust, confidence, and a feeling of security at work. In contrast, a negative experience manifests as fear, distrust, and concerns about potential risks. Which is, needless to say, not an ideal way for anyone to feel at work.
So what influences the safety experience?
Well, it’s a combination of many factors. Broadly though, it can be broken down into the domains of Leadership, Awareness, Engagement, Embedding and Accountability.
Leadership
Leaders put safety first, and create an environment where it’s woven into the very fabric of their organisation. This goes beyond focusing on compliance and metrics — it considers the human skills and factors needed to truly lead safety.
Awareness
Everyone in the organisation can identify and correctly respond to risks and hazards. They’re across all safety messaging and participate in regular safety training.
Engagement
Everyone is actively involved in building a culture of safety. People are continually engaged in ongoing safety conversations. They’re comfortable reporting incidents and concerns, pulling others up on potentially unsafe behaviours, and sharing ideas for improving safety.
Embedding
Safety is an integral part of everything people do at work, whether it’s a seemingly insignificant daily task or a major initiative. Safety is an integral part of people’s beliefs, behaviours, values, actions, rituals, decision-making, and mindset.
Accountability
Safety is everyone’s responsibility. There are clear expectations and consequences for failing to meet them. There are investigations and corrective actions following safety incidents. People feel empowered to stop work if it’s unsafe.
Typically, our work with safety leaders focuses on one, maybe two domains of the safety experience in each scope of work.
But we’ve always wondered — is there a way to lift the safety experience across all five domains simultaneously? Is there a more integrated approach to driving safety and business outcomes through an integrated framework?
We believe there is.
In fact, we’ve already begun working with three innovative Australian businesses to develop their safety value propositions (SVPs).
And it was while this work is in the early stages, that we embarked on an exploration of the current state of the safety experience in Australian high-risk industries to better understand what factors are at play.
From qualitative to quantitative
For nearly two decades, we’ve had access to some incredible secondary research and qualitative insights from our collaborators. This has been incredibly valuable in understanding the safety landscape, and pivotal to the success of the work.
However, we craved an even broader perspective and quantitative data.
Now here we are, and we’re thrilled to share the results with you.
The safety experience in Australian high-risk organisations
In January 2024, we commissioned an online survey of 400 people, aged 18+, working in high-risk industries in Australia.
We defined ‘high-risk industries’ as mining, manufacturing, FMCG, warehousing and logistics, construction, utilities and energy, transport and postal, and wholesale or retail trade.
It’s worth noting that with a survey of this size, we had a margin of error of up to 5% (so 95% confidence).
The sample comprised a good spread across gender, age, income, location and education level.
Beyond demographics, we also wanted to establish whether employment characteristics play a role in influencing the safety experience. Therefore, the sample spread also considered factors like employment status, size of employer, years in the industry, and role responsibility.
While we consider all these industries ‘high risk’, our sentiments weren’t shared by everyone in the sample group. Although many expressed awareness of the risks involved in their industry, a notable percentage perceived limited or standard risk.
Perceptions of risk associated with industry in which people are employed.
An encouraging current state
On the whole, our research found that the safety experience in Australian high-risk industries is strong. A finding that echoes our experience working with our Australian collaborators.
The table below shows the proportion of survey respondents who ‘strongly agree’ that each statement applies in their workplace.
Across the five domains of the safety experience, it’s obvious that Accountability is the strongest overall. Safety leaders in Australia have done a great job setting clear expectations and consequences when it comes to safety compliance.
Another thing to note is that the top attribute of Engagement is the single strongest across all domains. However, within the Engagement domain, we also see the three other attributes related to active safety engagement as the (comparatively) weakest attributes.
Factors influencing the safety experience
In analysing the safety experience in Australian high-risk industries, we looked for the factors that make a difference.
It turns out, there are quite a few.
We’ll take a closer look at some of the more interesting and influential over the following sections.
Exposure to a safety incident has an impact
Not surprisingly, the safety experience of people who had been exposed to a safety incident in the previous five years, 41% of our sample, was markedly different from the people who had no exposure.
This confirms that a personal, lived experience is a significant factor in people’s perspective. And it’s exactly what we would expect to see, relating to several biases, including optimism bias (the belief ‘it won’t happen to me’).
The table below shows the combination of ‘strongly agree’ and agree’ responses to each statement in their workplace.
Opportunities for improvement
Ideally, leaders would seek to not only improve the individual experience of people exposed to a safety incident in the previous five years, but also raise the collective safety experience.
This could be through a safety champions network providing a platform for sharing stories, or a pilot group to provide real-world feedback on new safety initiatives.
While this won’t be appropriate for every individual who’s experienced a safety incident, used discerningly and always with empathy, it’s a chance to harness the power of peer learning.
Role in the organisation makes a difference
In much of the work we do at Everyday Massive, we’re aware of a disconnect between leaders and the frontline. This isn’t necessarily a failing of a leader or leadership as a whole, but rather a factor that inherently exists, and one we work together to address.
So it was unsurprising to see a similar trend evident in the research. People who identified as team members expressed a different safety experience compared to people leaders, who had a different experience again from those at senior leadership levels.
The table below shows the combination of the ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ responses to the statements.
Opportunities for improvement
One of the most effective ways to resolve a disconnect between frontline and leadership is to ensure safety initiatives, training, messages, and programs are delivered in the right way and at the right time.
This might sound simple or even obvious, yet it requires a genuine understanding of the groups involved, how to connect with them on a human level, and tailoring messaging to suit each segment.
It certainly means no ‘sheep dipping’ when it comes to safety programs.
The nature of the work being undertaken has an impact
Another interesting observation was that employees who defined their role as being mostly white-collar, or office-based, were more positive in their view of the safety experience compared to blue-collar workers.
While this may be a result of the greater inherent risk involved in frontline work, interestingly, people doing a mix of both white and blue-collar work rated the safety experience as extremely positive.
Opportunities for improvement
For organisations with a segment of the workforce engaged in both frontline and office-based work, it would be valuable to understand what’s unique about this particular group.
Could it be that they get the best of both worlds, understanding physical safety risks found in frontline work, as well as psychological safety and wellbeing more often discussed in office-based roles?
Or is it that those doing a combination of work are typically in more senior roles, so tend to already understand the importance of safety?
Whatever the reason, discovering what’s unique about this group in your organisation may provide insights into how to better support those who are having a less positive experience of safety (ie. those in frontline roles).
Tenure makes a difference
Tenure is another factor that contains a cautionary tale — and opportunity — for every organisation.
The data shows those who are new to an organisation, working there for less than two years, generally have a positive experience of safety. On the other end of the scale, those who have worked in an organisation for more than 10 years also expressed a positive experience.
For new hires, it could simply be the honeymoon phase where there’s often a more positive outlook on work. And for those who’ve been in an organisation for more than 10 years, they’ve likely picked up considerable safety savvy in the course of their work.
However, for people working in an organisation for 3 to 10 years, the perception of the safety experience dips. This might be influenced by a general disillusionment towards the organisation, but we believe the sentiment is safety-specific.
Opportunities for improvement
By being aware of this tenure-based trend, leaders can focus their efforts on a key segment where the safety experience is rated lowest, and therefore people are most at risk.
Our hunch is that a low opinion of the safety experience likely correlates to a lack of engagement and/or awareness. In many cases, this is caused or exacerbated by over-exposure to the same messaging and training over time.
Breaking habituation is a fundamental way to improve Engagement and Awareness.
When it comes to homogenous safety initiatives, our Creative Director, Thom Rogers, says ‘safe is dangerous’. Where everything looks the same, reads the same, and is rolled out in the same way year after year, organisations run the risk of important messages being overlooked or ignored.
Mixing things up in order to cut through, particularly where awareness and engagement are low, offers a huge opportunity to improve the safety experience.
Organisation size makes a difference
Our research found the size of an organisation has a considerable impact on the safety experience.
In smaller organisations of less than 500 people, the safety experience was generally perceived as quite positive. Similarly, in large organisations of more than 1,000 people, it was predominantly very positive.
Again, though, the data reveals a messy middle of enterprises comprising between 500 and 1,000 people where the safety experience dips.
This may be a result of smaller organisations having inherently greater connection between people and with leadership, and larger organisations having bigger budgets and more resources to allocate towards safety and wellbeing.
Opportunities for improvement
For organisations in the 500-1,000 employee range, there’s an opportunity to learn from the rigour and systems approach to safety and wellbeing employed by larger organisations.
Larger organisations have generally embedded safety and wellbeing within their organisational strategy to offset greater complexity and the challenge of connection among a larger number of people spread across more levels.
Where budgets and resources are more limited, by focusing specifically on the domains of Leadership, Engagement and Embedding, leaders at medium-sized organisations can begin to address the issues of scale that inevitably emerge as a business grows.
What next?
So… that was a lot.
But we can’t help but feel heartened that the research paints such a positive picture of the safety experience in Australian high-risk industries. Leaders, like you, have done an incredible job building solid foundations for the safety experience at your organisations.
Ah, but that doesn’t mean we should kick back in our ergonomic chairs and get too comfortable just yet.
Our research also found that 9 in 10 employees would consider the safety culture of an organisation before joining. In short: to attract (and retain) talent, we need to be continually refining the safety experience. Ongoing investment in this area will pay dividends in the long term.
So let’s keep seeking new and different ways to improve the safety experience across the domains of Leadership, Awareness, Engagement, Embedding and Accountability. Particularly, the potential for an SVP to drive safety and business outcomes through a comprehensive and integrated framework.
There’s so much more still to unpack from this research. So, if you’re interested in going even deeper down the rabbit hole, please reach out — we’d be only too happy to share more.
We’re also continuing to gather qualitative insights, and we’d love to hear your personal experience of leading safety — so, please, drop us a line.
Otherwise, stay connected, and keep your gaze towards the horizon for more Massive Insights.
