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Safety Culture and Safety Climate

People working in the construction industry understand, and research confirms, that a strong safety climate and safety culture helps reduce the potential for injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Since 2016, CPWR has worked closely with the industry to develop tools and resources — all available for free — to help companies achieve a strong positive job site safety climate/culture.

Our newest tool, the Safety Climate-Safety Management Information System (SC-SMIS), builds on and expands our work. With the SC-SMIS, account holders can use CPWR’s reliable and valid Safety Climate Assessment Tool (S-CAT — English or Spanish) to measure their company’s safety climate maturity, or they can get a snapshot of the safety management activities they’re currently using to strengthen safety climate with the Safety Climate Assessment Tool for Small Contractors (S-CATsc — English or Spanish). The eight leading indicators measured by both instruments are:

  1. Demonstrating Management Commitment
  2. Aligning and Integrating Safety as a Value
  3. Ensuring Accountability at All Levels
  4. Improving Supervisory Leadership
  5. Empowering and Involving Employees
  6. Improving Communication
  7. Training at All Levels
  8. Encouraging Owner/Client Involvement

After employees complete the S-CAT or S-CATsc, the company can review the scores; use that information to select from a large repository of evidence-based safety management resources that are specifically designed to improve low-scoring indicators; and then develop a plan to help put those resources into action.

Begin or continue your company’s safety climate improvement journey by visiting the new SC-SMIS website and creating an account. If you enter as a guest, you can still access the resource repository and download the S-CAT or S-CATsc, but you’ll need an account to administer a survey at your company.

Older CPWR Safety Climate/Culture Resources: