Matthew Koss Profile

Unsafe Acts: C-Suite Behaviors that Wreck Safety Culture

The C-Suite is a highly competitive, demanding, and often cutthroat environment, where individuals are often under immense pressure to maintain the organization’s success. Top executives rely on business metrics as essential tools for evaluating performance and driving improvement.

In more recent years, OSH Professionals have been introduced into this environment with the same expectation of meeting company objectives as business executives responsible for profit, sales, productivity, market share, budgets, etc. It is not surprising that C-Suite executives, influenced by decades of success using Scientific Management principles, have regarded safety as another business metric.

However, when it comes to safety culture, an over-reliance on metrics can lead to unintended negative consequences that can wreck safety culture. This session will discuss some common pitfalls that plague the C-Suite’s approach to safety culture and some insights to avoid such pitfalls.