Correlation Between Culture, Safety, 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.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

About three construction workers died each day in 2017 and thousands more were injured to varying degrees. This hasn't changed much through 2022. Construction is dangerous and there is no getting around that, however we are a long way 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 that 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.
  • The leaders at these companies define the culture by not tolerating bad behaviors around safety and planning which are linked as well as being larger-than-life caricatures modeling the behaviors they want. Remember the spotlight of leadership

 

Learn More:

 

Normalization of Deviance - The Biggest Safety Risk (Video Playlist)

 

 




Construction Contracting, Materials Science, and "People Science"
Psychology is materials science for people. Engineers use materials science to design and build construction projects that are both safe and meet the needs of their owners. Organizational Development is the engineering of individuals into effective teams.
DD001 - Locus of Control
Expanding on locus of control, including how it drives decision making at all levels and answering three questions: Decisions from the top, how to improve locus of control, and how it impacts technology selection & use.
Construction Superheroes
Building a project and a construction business definitely requires heroic efforts at times, but full-time superheroes stifle growth, introduce risks, and rarely make for smooth successions.