Real Safety Leadership: 10 Ways Executives Can Drive Safety in the Field

Engaged executive leadership is key to preventing serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs).

Leadership can have a significant impact on the culture of safety throughout an organisation. From the boardroom to the frontline, the attitudes and behaviours of executive leaders shape how safety is prioritised and put into practice, especially during high-pressure situations.

Leaders who actively champion safety through strategies such as Critical Risk Management (CRM) help build a culture where workers are empowered to speak up and take ownership of managing fatal risks.

In this blog, we explore 10 ways executives can demonstrate real safety leadership to improve their organisation’s culture of safety as well as strategies for effectively governing risk on the frontline.

Why Safety Leadership Starts at The Top

More than policies or procedures, how executives demonstrate their commitment to safety helps shape the culture of safety throughout an organisation.

At every level, executive leaders influence how safety is prioritised and practiced. For example, a 2021 highlighted that unsafe behaviours are often the result of a negative organisational safety culture, which includes the attitudes and beliefs transmitted from executives. Through engagement, trust, ownership, and integration, executives can drive the development of a positive safety culture, leading to an increase in safe behaviours and a reduction in SIFs (Walters, 2021).

Regulations and industry frameworks also recognise the importance of executive leadership in SIF prevention. Notably, the provision of a safe workplace is a key compliance obligation under many safety management standards, including ISO 45001, the Australian WHS Act, New Zealand’s Health and Safety at Work Act, Canada’s Criminal Code (Bill C-45), and OHSA regulations in the United States.

In high-risk workplaces, leadership involvement supports the development of a risk-aware culture where proactively addressing risk and continuous improvement becomes part of day-to-day operations. Executive leaders who are visible and engaged help empower workers to speak up and stop work without fear when safety is compromised.

In Critical Risk Management (CRM), leadership commitment is a core strategy for SIF prevention. Executive leaders play a vital role in supporting workers to recognise fatal risks, verify critical controls, and stop work immediately when those controls are absent or ineffective.

The Costs of Leadership Disengagement in Frontline Safety

Leadership that is disengaged in frontline safety can have negative material impacts across a business. One of the most serious is worker disengagement, a well-established risk factor for SIF events. Worker disengagement is also strongly linked to decreased operational efficiency, productivity, and compliance.

In 2018, a study found manufacturing employees who experienced work-related injuries also reported low levels of engagement in workplace safety, including failing to review their job risk analysis (JRA) and to fully complete lockout/tagout procedures (Mullins, 2018). Conversely, a 2023 study of contract miners found engaged safety leadership significantly and positively influenced safety compliance and participation (Quansah et al, 2023).

An absence of engaged executive safety leadership can significantly weaken safety culture. By eroding trust and accountability at the frontline, disengaged leadership can create the conditions where SIFs are more likely, exposing the organisation to increased legal, reputational, and operational risk.

Some of the potential costs of disengaged leadership include:

  • Increased incidents, near-misses, and unreported hazards
  • Production delays and unplanned downtime
  • Increased direct and indirect incident costs
  • Loss of contract eligibility with clients who require clean records
  • Increased insurance premiums
  • Reputation and brand damage
  • Financial penalties
  • Legal liability and/or prosecution for failure of due diligence.

In many regions, boards and senior executives are obligated to effectively govern the management of all the fatal risks in their organisation. A failure to demonstrate accountability can lead to significant legal penalties, including possible jail time, in the event of an incident.

To learn more about the responsibilities of executive leadership for overseeing the management of critical risk, download our resource Effective Critical Risk Governance.

10 Ways Executives Can Drive Safety in the Field

Real executive safety leadership is visible, accountable, and empowers workers to take ownership of safety at the frontline.

Here are 10 simple ways executive leadership can drive real safety outcomes in the field.

1. Show Up Where the Work is Done

Executive leaders who are visible on-site signal that safety is personal, not just policy. Listening, asking questions, and demonstrating care builds trust and reinforces safety as a shared value.

2. Establish Accountability at All Levels

Leaders can keep teams aligned on safety by setting clear expectations and actively checking they’re being met. Directly engaging in Critical Risk Management (CRM) activities, such as observing critical control verifications, also connects leaders to the reality of fatal risks and demonstrates their own accountability.

3. Invest in Coaching and Mentoring

Building capacity helps reinforce expectations and develops capable, confident safety leaders in high-pressure or high-risk environments. By investing in frontline and mid-tier leadership though coaching or mentoring, executives can shape leaders who model and sustain organisational safety values.

4. Empower Everyone to Stop Work When It’s Unsafe

The confidence to stop work when something doesn’t feel right is the foundation of a safe working environment. Executives must model this principle and actively support those who stop unsafe work. A quick follow-up after a stop-work event reinforces the message that safety is a priority.

5. Celebrate the Red, Not Just the Green

Raising a concern is safety leadership in action. When someone identifies a hazard, they help raise risk awareness across the frontline and create an opportunity for proactive improvement. Recognising and supporting workers who flag an issue shifts the culture from blame to learning and builds the psychological safety workers need to speak up.

6. Recognise Safety Champions

People at all levels can drive safety. Frontline workers who consistently model safe behaviours can often exert more influence than any senior leader. Noticing and supporting informal safety leaders – or those who lead by example – can create meaningful change in frontline safety. Equip safety champions with the recognition and tools to help others.

7. Involve Frontline Workers

The people doing the work understand it best. Involving frontline workers in planning, problem solving, and reviewing risk controls not only draws on their expertise but also results in more practical, grounded safety solutions.

8. Listen and Follow Through

Real safety leaders take feedback seriously and respond with action, building trust and momentum within teams. Even small changes, when clearly linked to worker feedback, show that all voices are valued.

9. Embed Safety into Business

Treating safety like profit sends a powerful message. When built into budgets or rewarded in performance reviews, safety becomes a strategic part of the business and demonstrates to workers that their wellbeing truly matters.

10. Model a Safety Mindset Every Day

Senior leadership should demonstrate consistency in their commitment to safety. The behaviour of senior leaders can reinforce or erode the culture they’re trying to build. From emails and meetings to site visits, executives must reflect the safety mindset they want mirrored across the organisation.

How to Effectively Govern Frontline Safety

Effective safety governance puts in the systems in place for safety to be effectively managed at the frontline. This means setting clear expectations and fostering a culture where safety is prioritised, even when under pressure.

Rather than handling day-to-day operations, executive leadership should focus on equipping workers with the necessary tools to drive safety engagement and accountability, such as training, defined responsibilities, and embedded frameworks for the prevention of SIFs.

To effectively govern frontline safety, executives should aim to:

Set clear safety expectations

  • Define non-negotiable safety practices such as critical control verification
  • Reinforce safety standards in operational reviews
  • Use consistent language to align teams on “good” safety performance.

Establish accountability

  • Install a role-based system for managing critical risks and controls
  • Build safety responsibilities into performance reviews
  • Regularly monitor action plans to ensure follow-through.

Empower frontline decision-making

  • Involve workers in the identification of critical risks and critical controls
  • Create a culture where stopping work when it’s unsafe is expected
  • Simplify escalation pathways for emerging risks or failed control verifications.

Act on leading indicators

  • Adopt a data-driven solution to capture leading indicators
  • Use dashboards that track risk in real time
  • Monitor trends in action plans and failed control verifications.

Oversee the management of fatal risks

  • Define and prioritise critical risks (the risks that can kill)
  • Ensure critical controls are implemented and being verified before work begins
  • Install a Critical Risk Management system to simplify oversight.

Executive leadership has specific responsibilities for overseeing the management of critical risks. The five key steps to effectively govern fatal risks and demonstrate accountability can be found in our resource Effective Critical Risk Governance.

How Critical Risk Management Helps Executive Safety Leadership

Critical Risk Management is a dedicated method of SIF prevention. It focuses on identifying and controlling the most significant risks with the potential to cause SIFs and other catastrophic incidents.

By installing a best practice Critical Risk Management system, executive leadership can:

  • Direct resources to target risks with the severest impacts
  • Enhance strategic decision-making
  • Shift from reactive to proactive safety governance
  • Foster a culture of accountability and continuous improvement
  • Improve executive engagement in the field
  • Strengthen stakeholder trust.

Purpose-built solutions can help organisations successfully integrate and sustain Critical Risk Management across their operations. Forwood’s CRM+ is a comprehensive digital solution that streamlines and simplifies Critical Risk Management in complex, high-risk workplaces. More than a software solution, CRM+ comes equipped with a predefined method, content, and change management guidance for fully supported implementation.

Key Takeaways for Executive Teams

  • Executive leaders can directly impact their organisation’s safety culture and frontline safety behaviours.
  • Visible, engaged leaders build trust and empower workers to take ownership of managing risk.
  • Disengaged leadership can increase risk and SIF events, leading to potential legal liability, financial penalties, and prosecution.
  • Supporting workers to stop unsafe work and recognising safety champions helps develop a proactive culture of safety.
  • Workers should be actively involved in identifying fatal risks and implementing and verifying critical controls.
  • Embedding safety into business and operations, such as by adopting a Critical Risk Management (CRM) system, can improve safety in the field as well as executive oversight and accountability.

To learn more about achieving effective safety leadership, download our guide Effective Critical Risk Governance.

References

Mullins, R. (2018). Measuring employee engagement: Are engaged employees less likely to sustain a workplace injury? Online Theses and Dissertations, 545.

Quansah, P. E., Zhu, Y., & Guo, M. (2023). “Assessing the effects of safety leadership, employee engagement, and psychological safety on safety performance”, Journal of Safety Research, 86, 226–244.

Walters, T. (2021). Safety professional perceptions of executive leadership interventions on safety culture. Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies, 9903.