Building Safety Culture in High-Risk Teams
Our Principal Rod Maule joined a panel at the Workplace Health & Safety Show Melbourne this week to discuss how leaders build safety culture in high-risk teams. Fellow panellists included Melanie Windust, National Health and Safety Manager at Cleanaway, and Julie Gratton, Safety, Health, Environment and Wellbeing Director at AECOM, hosted by Georgina Poole from Event Learning Australia. Here's what came out of the conversation.
Safety culture and organisational culture
Safety culture is not a separate construct from organisational culture. It is organisational culture viewed through a safety lens. Organisational culture is "the way we do things around here," and safety culture is what that looks like when you examine how your people think about and manage risk.
Treating safety culture as something separate tends to produce parallel programmes that sit outside the real levers of the business. Understanding it as a lens on organisational culture keeps the focus where it belongs: influencing the broader culture and working within it to drive better safety outcomes.
High-risk and blended workforces
Organisations with genuine fatal and serious injury risks in construction, resources, logistics, and utilities have an easier time aligning everyone from the Board to the frontline around safety as a priority. The stakes are visible, and the consequences of failure are immediate and severe.
In white-collar workforces or organisations with blended risk profiles, that clarity is harder to achieve. The risks are often psychosocial in nature and less immediately visible. The discipline required is the same: identify the most significant risks, define the controls that matter most, and concentrate your energy there. The thinking that drives high-hazard safety programmes applies equally in these environments.
Where to start
When working with organisations on safety culture, the starting point is always context. What are the critical risks? What are the critical controls, the ones whose failure leads to serious harm?
From there, the focus shifts to strategic alignment: articulating how the safety strategy supports the organisation's operational and commercial goals. When safety leaders can make that case clearly, executive and Board engagement follows, and higher-order controls become achievable.
At BP, this approach delivered an 80% reduction in armed robberies within two years, sustained for many years after. At Australia Post, the same focus on critical risk and critical controls contributed to a 98% reduction in workers exposed to mobile plant and heavy vehicles, and saw more than two-thirds of the motorbike fleet replaced with safer three-wheel vehicles over five years.
When the approach is embedded across the Board, Executive, management, and workforce over time, safety performance becomes self-sustaining.
Advice for Heads of Safety
Two things consistently make a difference for senior safety leaders looking to improve culture in their organisation.
Get an external perspective. Independent advisors reviewing your strategy, programmes, and workplace give Boards and Executives confidence that the organisation is focused on the right things, or provide the honest assessment needed to recalibrate. External perspective has practical value even for strong internal teams.
Invest in your own development. A coach or mentor with genuine subject matter expertise in safety leadership can improve your effectiveness in the role. The positions are demanding, and having experienced support available makes a tangible difference.
How we can help
The Strategic Step Advisory works with organisations on safety strategy development, culture assessment, Board support, and executive coaching. Our starting point is always understanding your context before offering any direction.