Over three quarters of safety leaders say zero incident targets within workplaces persist but are unrealistic.
A survey by Blackline Safety found 95% of safety leaders planned to maintain or increase their budgets over the next two years.
Safety budgets priorities
The Keeping People Safe: Global Data on the State of Workplace Safety report found 76% of safety leaders’ top five budget priorities are worker training (46%), workforce engagement (41%), improvements of infrastructure to reduce risk (34%), new technology (30%), and internal advocacy to promote value of safety (29%).
In terms of setting safety targets, 76% of safety leaders said although zero incident goals persist, they were unrealistic.
The report also uncovered insights into safety leaders’ attitudes towards AI: 65% of leaders expect AI risk prediction tools to become increasingly key, particularly towards safety data analytics and reporting (84%), training and simulation (83%) and predictive risk analytics (79%).
Two hundred senior safety and operations professionals with at least 500 employees were surveyed.
Industry shift towards integrated safety culture
Just under three quarters (73%) indicated they reviewed incident reports and near-miss records and only a third (33.5%) spent time on predictive analytics to forecast risk.
Christine Gillies, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Blackline Safety said: “It’s clear from the survey that a majority of experts support a change in safety culture across industries.
“As a result, we’ll see safety increasingly becoming a holistic, enterprise-wide operating system instead of a compliance function, and companies that treat it this way will close the protocol-behaviour gap, creating safer and more productive workplaces.
“Three pillars make up a strong safety culture – training and communication, tools and technology and data and reporting.
“Most organisations have all three, yet few have them working together, which means gaps persist even when investment increases.”
