Enhanced occupational safety yields benefits across the board. In fact, safety, quality, productivity and employee motivation all go hand in hand, which means that when attitudes to safety improve, your company can simultaneously improve sustainability and boost profitability.
Changing safety culture is not always straightforward, however. It requires an understanding of the prevailing attitudes in your organization and a willingness to work together to improve company safety and make it fit for the future.
One tool you can use to inform this process is the Bradley Curve. This visual matrix highlights the connection between occupational safety and company culture, illustrating that if you want to reduce the accident rate and encourage employees to behave safely, you should look at two key factors: leadership and corporate culture.
In this article, we explain how you can use the Bradley Curve to identify which stage your company’s culture is at, as well as the steps you can take to improve company safety, motivate employees, and make lasting reductions to your accident rate.
what is the Bradley Curve?
Designed as a means to evaluate safety culture, the Bradley Curve was developed in 1995 by DuPont employee, Berlin Bradley. It depicts four distinct stages, with companies experiencing frequent accidents in the first stage and at the other end of the spectrum, companies where accidents are rare or do not occur at all. Each of the four stages is characterized by a behavioral basis for accident prevention including natural instincts, rules and supervision, responsibility, or shared responsibility.
Stage 1: Reactive occupational safety based on instinct
Employees do not take responsibility for occupational safety and accidents are seen as an inevitable part of day-to-day work.
Stage 2: Dependent occupational safety based on rules and supervision
Employees regard occupational safety as rules set by the management. Meanwhile, management assumes that the accident rate will fall if employees simply follow the rules. This leadership style involves exerting pressure on employees.
Stage 3: Independent occupational safety based on employees’ self-responsibility
Employees take responsibility for themselves and understand the underlying significance of occupational safety measures.
Stage 4: Interdependent occupational safety based on shared responsibility
Occupational safety is an integral part of a company’s DNA and employees take responsibility for themselves and others. They do not accept low standards and understand that improvements depend on working as a team.
Simply put, the Bradley Curve shows the potential development of a company’s safety culture as it moves through the four stages.
how mature is your safety culture?
To better understand the concept, and to help assess where your company currently sits, consider this expanded version of the Bradley Curve:
In addition to the behavioral basis for each phase, each stage in the Bradley Curve also reflects the prevailing attitude to accidents. To classify your company, consider how executives, managers and employees in your company regard the accident rate.
If accidents are considered normal, your company is at the first stage. To reach the next stage, you need to make managers aware of their responsibilities in relation to occupational safety.
Each stage is also characterized by employees’ motivation to engage with occupational safety, as well as the motto of the prevailing leadership style.
In terms of the specific behavioral basis for each stage, there are certain types of occupational safety activities and measures that serve to lay these foundations including those set by management and by individuals. This in turn gives rise to responsibility, which is recognized and taken on by different people and groups, depending on the maturity of the safety culture.
Examine the matrix systematically to define what stage your company is at. Ask yourself what your employees think about the topic of occupational safety, and how they embody this to position your company on the scale from 1 to 12.
how to conduct an employee survey on safety culture
For the fullest picture of your company’s culture, don’t assess it by yourself. Present the DuPont Bradley Curve to your colleagues, employees and management-level staff to gain a realistic idea of your company’s position. If this is not possible, however, you should at least ask yourself two questions:
- Where do you think your employees would position themselves and their direct superiors?
- Where do you think management-level staff would position themselves and their employees?
The diagram below shows an example employee survey. It clearly shows that many employees in this hypothetical company position its safety culture – as practiced by the workforce (X axis) and management (Y axis) – in the lower developmental stages of the Bradley Curve.
good to know
It’s important for managers to understand that employee responses in the red fields on the right of the diagram represent strong criticism. The employees’ approach to occupational safety is more mature than that of management, which makes it difficult for management to improve occupational safety. It is essential that managers start by identifying what they can do to impact their team. When used in this way, the Bradley Curve is an excellent cognitive tool to change company attitudes – especially at management level.
how to change safety culture
Once you have identified the status quo of your company’s safety culture, it is relatively straightforward to implement steps in order to reach the next stage on the Bradley Curve. Look at the characteristics for the next stage and consider what tools and measures could help you get there.Bear in mind that a willingness to change always requires a certain degree of initiative, which must come from all levels.
The following questions can drive your company’s development:
- Where are we on the Bradley Curve and what approaches can we derive from that?
- How can we encourage people to see themselves as part of a team – and what regulations and standards can help to create a safe corporate culture?
- What can management do to support this cultural change?
- How can leadership become more prominent and stand for change in our company?
- Where are our employees on the curve?
- How do employees assess management?
Perhaps the most decisive step towards creating a better safety culture is moving from the second to the third stage. For example, in the second stage, employees do things because they must, however, in the third category, employees act safely because they want to.
For leadership, there are some key characteristics that facilitate this transition including focusing on employee empowerment, identification and integration.
Developing a system of safety officers will only pay off for companies in the third stage or higher. The same goes for establishing a process to improve attendance. In situations where pressure is exerted as a leadership tool, meetings and discussions with managers following a period of absence will usually be perceived as criticism.
how a safety culture can yield business success
Crucially, in addition to reducing accident rates, DuPont was also able to show, that as a company’s safety culture matures, the quality of its work also improves, along with overall productivity and profits.
In essence, the more developed your safety culture is:
- the more future-ready and adaptable your company will be
- the more closely your company will focus on quality
As this version of the Bradley Curve shows, a company is only capable of change – and therefore, ready to face the future – from the third stage onward since a raise in quality and productivity go hand in hand with improved employee performance.
ready to change your safety culture?
For occupational safety to become a practiced part of your company culture, every manager needs to pay attention to this issue. Credibility forms the basis for practical measures so companies that merely talk about methods without focusing on managers’ attitudes, are doomed to fail.
Finally, it is important to tailor your methods to the existing culture and employees. Don’t try to skip stages – instead, aim for step-by-step progress along the Bradley Curve. In some cases, it can take 8 to 10 years to progress from the first stage to the fourth, however the rewards are significant, resulting lasting success and sustainable performance.
We invite you to learn more about AMCS EHS Management – contact us now. You can also see for yourself how it streamlines your EHS tasks. Request a free demo now.