Why Sustainability + Safety Go Together

6 minutes04/01/2025

A successful safety culture is all about helping people navigate risk and uncertainty effectively. In fact, more companies today realize it should be the heart of the business itself.

But what does that entail? How do they bring it into practice?

Safety enables better operational performance and is not a separate business function. Companies can engage front-line workers in decision-making, since those closest to the work often provide the best insights. The key to a robust and complete safety culture is fostering psychological safety so employees feel empowered to raise concerns. In this way, safety conversations become more dynamic and ongoing.

How leaders shape safety and sustainability culture

Leaders define every aspect of a business. But their responsibility does not end there.

With the emphasis on responsible corporate behaviors towards safety and environmental issues, the entire organization must be aware of them. But it has to begin with leadership.

Loïc Chavaroche, CSR-ESG Director at the Sterne Group says, "It's clear that QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety, Environment), CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), and overall sustainable development can only be achieved through a decision by general management, an explanation to all levels of the organization and, above all, acceptance and a sense of participation." 

Daniel Hummerdal, Director of Safety Innovation, Southpac International Group also adds,
"Engaged workers drive not just safety, but efficiency, cost reduction, and operational excellence. Organizations that fail to prioritize engagement risk creating rigid, compliance-heavy environments that miss the nuances of how work actually happens."

Focus on training

For a safety culture to be effective, training needs to be a strategic process involving continuous learning. An effective way to do this is to embed spaced learning models, where workers can engage in short, frequent, scenario-based sessions throughout the year rather than relying on annual courses.

"Forward-thinking organizations prioritize operational learning – leveraging real work experiences over theoretical instruction,” says Hummerdal. “Instead of generic training modules, they incorporate job-site walk-throughs, peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, and micro-learning during shift transitions. The key is ensuring training evolves with the work itself, rather than being a static compliance requirement."
 

Driving a robust safety culture

Companies that prioritize safety and continuously refine their strategies are more likely to create safer workplaces, reduce incidents, and improve overall productivity. 

To confidently manage risk across the board, and implement effective mitigation strategies, you have to collaborate. Success depends on insights from people, data, and integrated systems.

You should also rely on a combination of KPIs, real time monitoring tools, safety dashboards, and mobile apps that allow for immediate corrective action. Continuous training, fostering a strong safety culture, leadership commitment, and proactive hazard identification are essential for improving occupational health and safety competencies. Successful initiatives are characterized by regular evaluations and employee involvement.  

Strong leadership, employee engagement, data-driven decision-making, and clear communication are key contributors to the success of safety management initiatives. 
 

The importance of an evolving and involving safety culture

If you're operating within a resource-intensive foundational industry, safety should be integral to every person in the company. Regulatory bodies evaluate your commitment to and performance within the safety field.

Employee engagement is necessary for any EHS strategy to work. And committed leadership is necessary for employee engagement initiatives to affect true change.

"Prioritizing human capital management (HCM) has become a strategic approach. The human capital management lens is a focus on how an organization attracts, recruits, develops, manages, and retains talent to achieve its overall goals,” says Professor Dr. Andrew Sharman, Chief Executive of the International Institute of Leadership & Safety Culture. “This is about the central importance of people in an organization, and it leads naturally to more attention paid to how their safety, health, and well-being are looked after."
 

How to gauge success and improve as a company

One of the biggest challenges in adapting to growing EHS trends is connectivity. It represents an opportunity to drive continuous improvement for employees and your company. EHS performance and communication shouldn’t take place in any silos.
Because of this, many organizations are moving away from single-system centralization and embracing interoperability to ensure that data flows across multiple platforms without disruption. Instead of replacing legacy systems, forward-thinking organizations use tools that empower the whole enterprise:

• APIs to connect disparate systems seamlessly 
• Power BI and other business intelligence tools to aggregate and visualize key safety insights
• Cross-platform data translation to standardize reporting across different stakeholders

For EHS software to support this shift, key features must include real-time analytics, mobile accessibility for front-line reporting, and automated compliance tracking.

"The future of EHS software will be defined not by integration alone, but by interoperability,” says Hummerdal. “Organizations that enable cross-system data flow are more likely to be efficient and effective."

Ensure your company’s longevity and growth

Sustainability should not be seen as a standalone function but should be integrated into all business decision-making. Sustainability risk is business risk. Being a sustainable company means being in business for years to come.

Sustainability is not just about reporting disclosures. It’s important to focus ESG efforts by integrating and embedding sustainability into all your business processes.

In short, it is possible to enhance performance while pursuing sustainability initiatives. Long term organizational success depends on sustainable practices, the implementation of which depends on both technology and people.