Last year, the AIHA Construction Committee and the AIHA Management Committee joined forces to develop a guide for companies that wanted to improve the safety “climate” on their work sites—in other words, create an atmosphere (hence the “climate” moniker) in which their workers feel comfortable raising safety issues with the knowledge that they will be listened to and actions will be taken to address the problems. This guide, “How to Improve the Safety Climate on Your Construction Site” (), was posted on the AIHA website last May. It presents steps employers can take to improve safety climate on their sites and contains eight sections:

Each section provides tips on how improvements can be made, discusses barriers to improvement and how to address them, offers ideas for small businesses (which may require different approaches to implementing the recommendations), explains how to evaluate whether changes are working, and lists resources.  The primary goal of this guide is to help employers build trust between workers and management, so when managers say, “Safety is really important to our company,” workers will actually believe them. Safety directors and managers will no longer have to be “safety cops” walking around the jobsite telling people to put on their PPE. Trying to regulate worker behavior is a losing proposition. Safety directors and even supervisors cannot watch everyone all the time. The only alternative is to empower workers to stop work if there is a dangerous situation and fix it before someone gets hurt.  The Construction and Management Committees hope this guide is helpful to those of you who truly are striving for a safe workplace.