Dupont Safety Culture Curve

The Safety Culture Curve, originally developed by the DuPont Corporation, is a great way to visualize our role in a safety culture. There are four phases in the Safety Culture journey and a natural progression from compliance to commitment.

As you go through each phase of the model, see if you recognize any of the following behaviors in yourself.

REACTIVE

“We work a risky job, so accidents are going to happen, and people are going to be hurt. We will just fix things when they go wrong.”

New teams often start out with little to no safety structure and can rely heavily on doing things the only way they know how. When there are changes, they’re usually a reaction and might not be a permanent solution. People in this phase might follow the safety procedures, but not necessarily realize it or understand them. They just react, and safety is left to chance.

DEPENDENT

“I might not like it, but the rules say I have to do it. Safety is pretty black and white.”

The second phase of the curve occurs when teams realize that a focus on safety is critical to success. This usually means a more black and white approach with lots of “do’s,” “don’ts,” rules, and procedures that are borne out of necessity as norms are established. Both teams of people and individual employees can operate in this phase.

Rules are followed because they have to, but safety practices are not fully embraced. Basically, they just don’t want to get in trouble. Moving beyond this phases requires ample time and training to understanding of why rules might be in place, what the expectations are, and how individuals can participate.

INDEPENDENT

“This all makes sense to me. I know I can make my own decisions and I definitely don’t want to get hurt or lose work!”

The trickier move along the culture curve is to go from Dependent to Independent, where safety becomes personal. Teams who have reached this point have employees who have internalized safety and feel that they can make a difference in their own well-being. They do things to keep themselves safe and take personal pride in it. In this stage, individual employees have a say in practices and policies, and if something doesn’t work, there are opportunities to collaborate on solutions.

INTERDEPENDENT

“I don’t want anybody to get hurt. We’re all in this together.”

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to build upon independence to become interdependent. With everyone taking responsibility for themselves, a greater team mentality develops naturally. In this phase, everyone watches out for one another for the greater good. There is a high degree of collaboration, and differences in departments or tasks matter far less than the common goal to get everyone home safely at the end of the day.