Correlation Between Safety Culture and Profitability and Growth

There is a high correlation between contractors that have consistently GREAT safety records and consistently GREAT profitability, growth, morale and talent retention.

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D. Brown Management
June 16, 2018 2 minute read
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About three construction workers died each day in 2017 and thousands more were injured to varying degrees.  Construction is dangerous and there is no getting around that however we are a long ways from being as safe as we could be.  

Leadership Tools: Safety Compliance will only take you so far. Graph representing correlation between compliance and culture.

We are not specialists in construction safety.  We work closely with the management teams of contractors helping them develop sustainably growing businesses.  These are our observations regarding safety:

  • Contractors can only get their safety records so good (EMR +/- 0.9) through compliance activities alone including complex sets of rules, inspections and punishments.  
  • Contractors who have consistently GREAT (EMR < 0.7) records focus much more on training, planning and building a culture where team members care so much about each other they will not let each other do anything that might cause an injury.  
  • This rigorous level of high-involvement planning combined with disciplined daily execution nearly always impacts every other aspect of the business leading to GREAT performance.  

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