The safety industry insists that a strong safety culture requires senior management support. This belief has become the favorite excuse for poor frontline performance. The truth is, supervisors create a culture through daily relationships with their crews, not through executive endorsements or corporate policies. The supervisor IS the culture for their crew. Companies that equip supervisors with relationship skills get the safety culture they want, regardless of how visible senior management support appears to be.
The safety industry has convinced itself that a strong safety culture requires senior management support. This belief has become the favorite excuse for poor frontline performance. The truth is, frontline supervisors control everything that actually creates safety culture—the daily relationships with team members.
Blaming senior management's seeming indifference to safety has become the go-to excuse for safety performance issues. It's comfortable because it removes accountability from supervisors who have not been equipped with the skills to create trust and relationships with their teams. Put a supervisor in charge of safety performance without the skills to lead and expect underperformance.
In my book PeopleWork, I write about how some supervisors and safety people damage culture: "Openly articulating displeasure with senior management's lack of commitment to safety and resources is a knife in the heart of safety culture. Sure, it's nice to have senior management support for safety, but it isn't a requirement."
While safety departments wait for perfect conditions from above, team members keep getting hurt. The safety department that waits for senior management support may wait forever.
Meanwhile, the real work of safety culture—building trust with crews—goes undone.
The supervisor is the culture for their crew. Not the CEO, not the safety director, not corporate policy—the supervisor. As I explain in PeopleWork: "Workplace safety lies in the relationship between the frontline employee, the employee's immediate supervisor, and the bond among the entire crew. It's where the rubber meets the road."
Team members don't interact with executives daily. They interact with their supervisor. Executive support can't reach into the trenches where work actually happens because any communication with frontline teams goes through the supervisor.
Each crew's safety culture is whatever their supervisor creates with them each day.
Culture isn't built in boardrooms or written in policy manuals. It's built in daily conversations between supervisors and team members. It's built when a supervisor shows genuine care for each person. It's built through trust and respect earned over time.
These are relationship skills, not executive decisions. Frontline supervisors can still make excellent safety decisions without more money or a commitment from senior management. The skills they need—coaching, communication, caring—don't require management approval. They don't require budget increases (perhaps other than for basic leadership skills development for frontline supervisors). They require supervisors to care about their team members as individuals.
The question isn't whether senior management supports safety enough. The question is whether supervisors have the relationship skills to create the culture companies want. A supervisor who knows how to build trust doesn't need executive endorsement to have daily conversations that matter. They don't need a bigger budget to recognize good work.
They don't need someone else's permission to show they care about each team member.
Look around any company. There are probably two supervisors with the same resources and the same executive support (or lack of it), working in similar conditions.
The first supervisor blames management for everything. He complains about a lack of resources and uses it as an excuse for poor performance. His crew hears the message loud and clear: safety doesn't really matter here. The result? High turnover, high incidents, constant excuses. Team members comply at the bare minimum because they don't trust the supervisor or feel valued by him.
The second supervisor builds strong relationships regardless of executive support. She takes an interest in her team members and shows she cares about each person. She creates loyalty and stability even without additional corporate backing. The result? Low turnover, strong safety performance, and a tight crew that looks out for each other.
The difference isn't the level of executive support. It's the supervisor's relationship skills. One supervisor waited for perfect conditions that never came. The other supervisor created a culture with what she had.
This comparison probably exists in your own company right now, where one supervisor gets brilliant safety performance and another struggles.
You've just proven my point.
Supervisors control the most important elements of safety culture right now. Daily conversations that build trust. Personal attention that shows they care. Recognition that makes team members feel valued. Consistency that creates security.
None of these require executive approval. None of these require budget increases (other than skills training). They require supervisors who know how to do the relationship work.
PeopleWork Supervisor Academy has graduated over 1,000 supervisors who stopped making excuses and started building relationships. They discovered they could create strong safety culture regardless of what senior management did or didn't do. Because the supervisor is the culture for their crew.
The real question: Do supervisors have the skills to build those relationships? When supervisors master the basic leadership skills—coaching, communication, motivation, caring—they transform everything they touch: performance, productivity, turnover, recruiting, and yes, safety.
Stop accepting excuses about needing more executive support. Equip supervisors with the relationship skills to create the culture every company deserves.
Senior management support for safety is nice to have, but not necessary.