Like seeking the Holy Grail, business owners and managers have been searching for decades for the ultimate solution to safety. Look no more! The answer has been found! Treat your people well. Yep, it's that simple.

From the NIOSH Study of 1979, through the research of Dan Petersen and Judith Erickson, to a very recent study by SAFEmap International, everything points to the corporate culture and, within that, to focusing on your people.

The beauty of this finding is that it requires little in the way of money, additional staffing or complicated documentation. It also fixes any other internal problems that you might be facing.

Think about it. Once you admit that without your people performing at their maximum talent and skill level, everything falls apart, you can see that asking them for their ideas, treating them with respect, thanking them when they perform well and considering them partners strengthens your organization at every turn. Productivity increases, quality issues disappear, morale improves, turnover approaches zero and every other metric strengthens along with safety.

This does not mean that the tradition safety program elements of training, inspections, investigations, rules and hazard controls are unimportant. They are - and the regulators are there to remind you. But, these elements alone will never get you to excellence in anything unless they are paired with a strong and supportive culture.

The solution to safety is truly basic. In all likelihood, you have all or most of the traditional elements in place, so there may be little work to do there. As for the employee-centered culture, you and your leadership team simply have to look at the message you are delivering to your employees with every contact. If it's not clear that they are valued, then you need to change your focus.

Keep in mind that your people are very savvy. They know, often better than you, what comes first. If it's not them and their wellbeing, they see it instantly. In the SAFEmap International survey of 80,000 employees, questions such as "my company cares about safety" and "my supervisor cares about safety" failed to correlate with superior safety performance. It was only the question "our company cares about us" where there was a strong positive correlation.

Whatever you chose to do to encourage strong safety performance, be sure that the initiative is supported by good research and that it meshes well with the core elements and values of your organization. Failure to do this is what often leads to the "program of the month" derided by employees everywhere. It's clear from the start that the cookie cutter approach has no relationship to the culture of the organization and the needs of the employees.

If you have HSE questions or column suggestions, or would like to be added to the e-mail HSE Update list, contact Chip Dawson at (585) 461-1549.