Your safety culture problem is actually a supervisor development problem. You've invested in systems, procedures, and management commitment, but culture doesn't live there. It lives in the daily relationship between supervisor and team member. That relationship determines whether people speak up about hazards, admit mistakes, and look out for each other. Everything else only works when that relationship is strong. Without strong supervisor relationships as the foundation, your safety program becomes just another step employees are forced to endure.
Your safety culture doesn't live in your management system. It doesn't live in your procedures or your training programs. It doesn't even live in your senior management's commitment. Your safety culture lives in the daily relationship between supervisor and team member.
That relationship determines whether people speak up about hazards, admit mistakes, follow procedures they understand, and look out for each other. Everything else you're doing—all the systems, metrics, and programs—only work if that relationship is strong. If it's broken, nothing else matters.
When a safety incident happens, companies follow a familiar pattern. They double-down on safety: investigate what went wrong, update procedures, create new checklists, maybe even get senior management to talk about safety at a meeting. And it works for a while. But before long, they're back to the way they used to do things.
The problem isn't that these things don't matter. They do. The problem is that they only work when something else is in place first. That something else is the relationship between the supervisor and the team member.
When that relationship is broken, team members become hesitant to speak up. They're uncertain about reporting near misses. They will follow procedures they don't understand only to achieve a bare minimum compliance level.
Safety culture is what happens in the 10,000 small moments between the supervisor and their team members every single day.
It happens when a team member feels comfortable talking to their supervisor when something doesn't feel right. It's when they trust their supervisor enough to admit they made a mistake. It's when they believe their supervisor will support them when things go wrong. It's when they feel valued as a person and as a trusted member of the team.
These are the kinds of moments that create your culture. In The CareFull Supervisor, I talk about the three things supervisors need to care about: the quality of the work, the way they do that work safely, and the people they do that work with. When supervisors genuinely care about all three, team members feel it.
Culture happens on the front line. It happens in the daily conversations. It happens in the relationship between a supervisor and their team.
Most team members don't feel heard fairly at their workplace. Research from Gallup consistently shows that 70% of employees aren't engaged in their work. They show up, they do what's required, and they go home. But they're not really there.
When people aren't engaged in their work, they're not engaged in safely doing that work. To expect otherwise is delusion. If there's no connection to the work, there's no connection to safely doing the work.
This is a supervisor skills problem.
Most supervisors get promoted because they are excellent at the technical work. But nobody taught them how to build relationships with their team. Nobody showed them how to have conversations that create trust. Nobody gave them the skills to make each person feel valued and heard. They weren't equipped with relationship skills, so they do what they know how to do. They manage the technical work. And whatever the supervisor believes about safety is what their team eventually believes.
The cost of this shows up everywhere. Safety incidents increase under poor supervision. People quit supervisors, not companies. Even when the company culture is good overall, a bad supervisor drives people away. Quality and productivity gaps between well-led teams and poorly-led teams run between 15 and 30%.
Every operational problem you're trying to solve with a new system is actually a relationship problem in disguise.
When supervisors build strong relationships with their team members, everything improves. Team members speak up about problems. They admit mistakes and ask for help. They understand what's expected and feel supported to deliver it. They take pride in their work and look out for each other.
This is about building the foundation that makes everything else work.
Safety systems work best when relationships are strong. Procedures get followed when relationships are strong. Training and coaching sticks when relationships are strong. Bottom line: metrics improve when relationships are strong.
Stop buying more safety programs and hoping that will fix it. Without a strong trusting relationship to base your new purchase on, it becomes just another step employees are forced to endure.
Instead, start developing your supervisors' relationship skills. Teach them how to have conversations, instead of boring meetings. Show them how to build trust through consistency. Give them the tools to make each team member feel valued as an individual.
Donald Miller writes in his book Business Made Simple that "Clarity is a requirement of commitment." Before any person commits to anything, they need clarity. Your supervisors need to learn how to create that clarity through conversations that help each team member see what's in it for them.
When supervisors can clearly communicate the benefit to the team member, buy-in follows. When team members trust that their supervisor genuinely cares about them, they care about their work. When they believe their supervisor has their back, they have each other's backs.
This is the people-work that actually changes safety culture (there's a reason I titled my book, PeopleWork). The hard work of building relationships, one conversation at a time.
Your safety culture problem is a supervisor development problem. Safety has trained you that systems, metrics, and management commitment build culture. But none of it works without strong supervisor relationships as a foundation.
At PeopleWork Supervisor Academy, we've seen this transformation happen over and over again. Supervisors learn to build relationships first, and safety results follow naturally. Incidents drop. Engagement rises. People stay. Quality improves. Not because of better systems—because of better relationships.
The question is whether you're going to develop the people-work skills that actually build the culture you want.