World Day for Safety and Health at Work
How leadership style affects workplace safety and health
Forget the safety manuals for a moment. Forget the slogans, the bullet-pointed policies, and the “safety days” with mandazis, samosas and scotch eggs. If you want to understand how safe your workplace really is, do not look at the posters—look at your leadership’s conscience. Because when no one’s watching, it is not the policy that determines what happens but what people think you’ll let slide.
We recently explored how your conscience as a leader is not abstract because it dictates what you allow, tolerate and stand for, and this consciously or subconsciously affects your whole team. When it comes to your team’s safety and health, your conscience plays a role in the permission structure. It is when you hear about a safety concern and choose whether to escalate it or bury it. It is whether you brush off mental health complaints as “just stress” or take them seriously. The real test is always in the moment of pressure: do you act, or do you delay? The answer is often silence in workplaces that suffer repeated accidents or burnout crises. And that silence starts at the top.
Although safety cultures are built by procedures, the real foundation is built by what leaders allow, tolerate, and ignore. Consider manufacturing companies that empower employees, no matter their rank, to stop the line if they see a risk. This is not just a protocol but a statement: “We trust your judgment, and we’ll back you up.” Compare that with environments where raising concerns is seen as being difficult or disloyal. There, silence becomes survival. And in silence, danger thrives.
When leaders say they value well-being but push people to work overtime, skip breaks, or “just deal with it”—that is performative. It is the safety equivalent of tweeting about mental health but punishing people who take sick days. If your talk does not match your walk, your culture will crumble under the weight of the hypocrisy.
A safe workplace is an ethical workplace. This is especially true in high-risk industries, but it applies everywhere, from hospitals to offices. If your culture tolerates bullying, microaggressions, or burnout, it becomes more than just a “people issue” but also a safety concern. Physical and psychological safety are intertwined, and you are essentially compromising both by ignoring one.
Getting caught up in what you are legally required to do is often easy and safe. Real accountability rarely begins with compliance; it begins with a conscience. It asks: what kind of culture are you creating with your everyday decisions? When you stay silent about unsafe practices or difficult people, you are not being neutral. You are setting a precedent.
Authenticity matters. If you say you care about people’s safety, prove it, not with a campaign or an awareness week but by listening, responding, and acting when it counts. Your team does not need perfection. They need clarity. They need to know what is acceptable and what is not—and that those lines will not shift when things get hard. A leader’s is judged by action, rather than intention.
