The language used within an organisation plays a far more significant role in shaping its safety culture than often acknowledged.
Words carry the power to reinforce organisational values, beliefs, and set expectations regarding safety. While non-verbal cues contribute to communication, the way in which safety is spoken influences other people’s perceptions and behaviours.
Disparity Between Stated Policy and Operational Communication
Company documents often feature phrases such as “blame-free environment,” “management commitment to safety,” “personnel are trained to perform tasks safely,” “investigations are conducted for learning from safety events,” and “errors will not lead to punitive measures.”
This language is designed to cultivate a proactive and just safety culture, encouraging shared positive behaviours and attitudes. However, what is written in policy and what is observed are not always aligned.
During day-to-day operations, a shift in language often occurs. Employees might say, “the individual was investigated,” or colleagues or wider industry may even observe the blame being directed at the pilot/ATCO/operator for an incident, rather than focusing on the systemic organisational failures or limitations that contributed to the event. Similarly, management, despite advocating a “fair and just culture,” may discuss the outcome of an investigation by stating, “the individual was retrained,” subtly implying individual culpability rather than a broader systemic issue.
Even safety professionals, whose role is to promote safety improvements, can inadvertently contribute to this negative safety language by asserting, “the root cause was the ATCO/Engineer failing to…”. Such phrasing, regardless of the activity, assigns blame and spreads a negative perception of individual failure in safety events. This pattern makes it challenging to enhance safety culture, irrespective of the number of initiatives implemented.
Identifying Language Obstacles to Safety Culture
To determine whether words used within organisations are impeding the development of a positive safety culture, safety professionals must actively engage with all levels of the organisation. This involves:
Listening to staff: Pay close attention to the vocabulary and language used by frontline staff and managers when discussing safety incidents, near misses, or routine operations. Consider how leaders promote, communicate and prioritise safety. Look at what language the middle managers and supervisors use in front of their team.
Analysing management discourse: Evaluate the language used by leaders and managers during meetings, briefings, and debriefs. Are their statements consistent with the ” Safety Culture” policies?
Reviewing historical safety culture surveys: Review data from past surveys for recurring phrases or sentiments that might indicate an underlying blame culture. Assess how proactive the organisation is at reporting hazards and observations.
Assessing safety performance in conjunction with communication: If safety performance remains stagnant or deteriorates despite numerous safety initiatives, it may indicate that the language and communication style is undermining these efforts.
Strategies for Improvement
One of the biggest challenges faced by organisations is acknowledging and identifying that the language used may be inadvertently fostering undesirable safety behaviours and attitudes, thereby hindering the progression of a positive safety culture.
Once this has been identified, the following activities could be used to improve the organisations culture;
The importance of neutral language: Events should be described in a factual, non-judgmental manner, focusing on “what happened” rather than “who failed.”
Promoting systemic thinking: Encouraging language that explores contributing factors and latent conditions rather than individual error. For example, instead of saying “the engineer made a mistake,” reframe it as “the procedure did not account for this specific scenario.”
Emphasising learning over blame: Consistently use language that highlights lessons learned, corrective actions, and system improvements.
Consistent application of “just culture”: Reinforce that the purpose of investigations is to learn and improve, not to assign blame for honest mistakes.
Management of safety behaviour briefings: Use regular briefings to ensure leaders and managers share a common understanding of how language and behaviour influence safety culture.
A top-down approach will ensure that more consistent and positive safety language is used as part of day-to-day behaviours.
Organisations are spending a considerable amount of time and money in introducing and promoting a positive safety culture. It is time to pay attention to the language your managers and peers are using and ensure it is consistent, positive and replicated across all levels of the organisation.
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