Safety culture and work environment

Many factors are important for an organisation to function and for work to proceed without unexpected obstacles. Safety and the work environment are just as important to have on the agenda as finance and production.

For organisations where an unwanted event can cause severe consequences, it is especially important to have a good safety culture and a functioning work environment management.

Safety culture in the workplace

A safety culture is the common attitudes, values and perceptions that managers and employees have regarding safety and the work environment. A good safety culture means, among other things, that safety permeates the organisation's culture and that everyone knows, understands and does what is required to create opportunities to prevent ill health and accidents.

The culture in an organisation is created and maintained both in groups and by individuals. If you want to change the existing culture, it needs to be done deliberately and usually takes longer than, for example, installing an air purification filter.

All employees must be given the opportunity to participate in the change process in order for the changes to be sustainable. This applies to both managers and employees, at all levels and not just in the part of the organisation where the danger exists.

  • Often when talking about safety culture, an HTO (MTO) perspective is used. HTO is an abbreviation of human, technology, organisation and is about interactions between these. Taking into account the three factors and the interactions between them gives a greater overall perspective than just looking at, for example, technology-human or organisation alone.

    The HTO perspective can be used not only in preventive work environment management, but also when you need to investigate why something has happened.

    It is common to use HTO to investigate work accidents. Such an investigation is often called an HTO/MTO analysis.

Multiple legal frameworks need to coexist to play it safe

There are many laws and regulations that can affect safety work in your organisation. Which they are can vary from case to case. Regardless of what business you are in, the work environment needs to be part of your organisation's work on safety. In order to be able to work actively on the safety culture, it is fundamental to follow existing laws and regulations, including those on the work environment.

The accident prevention measures that are needed according to other legal frameworks need to be implemented so that they do not conflict with current work environment regulations.

The provisions of the Swedish Work Environment Authority also contain many regulations that can be important for safety in your organisation.

  • The Swedish Work Environment Authority's provisions on systematic work environment management (SAM) are regulations that you as an employer are obliged to follow. The provisions consist of several sections with requirements for what is included in systematic work environment management.Systematic work environment management is fundamental to being able to handle all aspects of safety and the work environment. It includes organising, implementing and following up work environment management in the organisation so that no one becomes ill, is injured or dies because of their work.

    Your organisation probably already has all or part of what is required in place. Start from what exists and works, and explore together with safety representatives and employees how you can best integrate the work environment into your organisation and your other work for safety. Work with an overall perspective so as not to create new risks.

    Our pages on systematic work environment management include information about the provisions, documentation support and the guidance “How to improve your organisation's work environment”.

  • Even if the organisation has a good safety culture, ill health and accidents will still occur. When a serious injury or death occurs at a workplace, the employer has an obligation to report it to us. The same applies to work injuries that affected several employees at the same time and accidents that entailed serious danger to life or health. This is stated in the Work Environment Act, chapter 3 section 3 a.

    Report serious personal injuries, serious incidents and deaths

Facts

Ill health

Illness according to objective medical criteria or physical and mental disabilities. The degree of the experiences, duration and the ability to function as before determine whether it is ill health or not.

Accident

Sudden, unwanted event that led to a person's physical or mental harm. Such an injury can be minor or as serious as a fatal accident.

Incident

Unwanted event or situation that could have led to health problems, illness or an accident.

Last updated 2025-04-24