What Safety Can Learn From Culture
What Safety Can Learn From Culture.
Why understanding people is a leadership capability
He waka eke noa
We are all in the same canoe.
(A NZ Māori whakataukī / proverb reminding us that everyone shares responsibility for the journey and its outcome.)
Safety systems only work when people can understand them, trust them and use them. Yet while organisations spend considerable effort designing procedures, controls and training, far less attention is often given to the cultural lenses through which people interpret those things.
Every leader has had a moment where a conversation went sideways and they couldn't quite explain why. Same message, same intent, completely different reaction. Over time you realise it's rarely about the technical issue. It's usually about people, the experiences they bring with them and the way they make sense of what they're being asked to do. That raises an important question.
What can safety learn from culture?
What can Māori concepts such as whanaungatanga and manaakitanga teach us about trust and leadership? What can Pacific communities teach us about collective responsibility? What can Papua New Guinea's Wantok system teach us about influence? What can Indigenous Australian traditions teach us about listening, storytelling and learning? And how do language, trauma, family, previous workplaces and life experience shape the way people understand risk, authority and communication?
These questions matter because we often talk about safety culture as something organisations create. The reality is that every worker brings culture with them long before they arrive at the gate. If leaders want people to speak up, follow controls, share concerns and trust the system, they first need to understand the people those systems are designed to support.
Culture arrives long before the induction
There is useful research behind this discussion. Edgar Schein viewed culture through organisations. Geert Hofstede explored culture through national patterns. Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe examined how organisations think and act under pressure. Sidney Dekker asks us to understand context before judgement. Amy Edmondson reminds us that people learn and contribute best when they feel safe enough to speak.
They all help explain culture, but none fully capture what happens when people from different backgrounds arrive on the same worksite. A person’s culture starts long before they arrive at the gate. Family, community, religion, cultural identity, previous workplaces, military service, trauma, peer groups, personal biases and life experience all shape the lens through which they see the world. They influence how someone communicates, how they build trust, how they respond to authority and how willing they are to challenge a decision.
Years ago I was involved in an exercise where a group of us watched a short scene depicting a crime. Afterwards, we were each asked to describe what we had seen. What struck me wasn't the similarities in our answers, but the differences. We had all watched the same footage from the same perspective, yet people noticed different details. Some focused on the individuals involved. Others noticed the environment. Some recalled things that others completely missed.
Nobody was lying and nobody was wrong. We had simply interpreted the same event through our own experiences, expectations and understanding of what mattered. Culture forms part of that lens, but so do trauma, language, family, community, previous workplaces, authority relationships and life experience. Safety is no different. People don't arrive at work as blank slates. They bring those same experiences with them, influencing how they perceive risk, interpret instructions, respond to communication, recall events and participate in investigations. If we want to understand why people behave the way they do, we first need to understand the lens through which they're viewing the work.
This also matters for workers who carry trauma. A raised voice, public criticism, confined spaces, isolation, aggressive body language or a particular style of supervision may create a response that looks like resistance, disengagement or poor performance. In reality, it may be a protective response shaped by previous experience. Leaders do not need to become counsellors, but they do need to understand that work design, communication and supervision can either create safety or remove it.
Workplaces add another layer to this cultural tapestry through their policies, standards, expectations and ways of communicating. Sometimes those expectations align naturally with a worker’s experience. Sometimes they don’t.
That gap is where safety problems often hide.
These observations are not abstract. They sit beside established safety expectations. The Work Health and Safety Act requires organisations to provide information, training, instruction and supervision that are suitable for the risks. Safe Work Australia’s Code of Practice on consultation emphasises communication that is clear, accessible and suited to the workforce. Research on psychological safety, high reliability and cross-cultural leadership points in the same direction. Understanding people is not a soft extra. It is part of doing safety work properly.
Speaking up sounds simple until you look closer
Modern safety relies heavily on speaking up. We encourage questioning, reporting and intervention. We tell people to stop the job if something doesn’t feel right. But Hofstede’s work on power distance shows that not everyone sees authority the same way. In some cultures, questioning a supervisor is disrespectful. Disagreeing publicly risks embarrassment. Silence can reflect respect rather than disengagement. If someone has spent their entire life being taught that challenging authority is inappropriate, then “poor safety culture” might actually be a communication mismatch. The expectation doesn’t change. The approach might need to.
This is leadership, not diversity training.
Connecting culture to HOP, Learning Teams and Safety Differently
Human and Organisational Performance, Learning Teams, Safety Differently and contemporary human-factors approaches all encourage us to understand work through the eyes of the people doing it. They remind us that context matters, that people generally make decisions that make sense at the time, and that learning comes from curiosity rather than judgement.
What is often missing from the discussion is that culture forms part of that context. The experiences, relationships, values and expectations people bring to work influence how they interpret risk, communicate concerns, respond to authority and participate in learning. Think back to the witness exercise. We all watched the same footage, yet we noticed different things. Work is no different. Two workers can face the same task, hear the same instruction and encounter the same hazard, yet interpret the situation differently because their experiences have shaped what they pay attention to and what they believe matters.
HOP encourages leaders to ask better questions. Culture helps explain why the answers vary.
Learning Teams rely on open conversation. Culture influences who speaks, who remains silent and how ideas are shared.
Safety Differently asks us to understand how work succeeds.
Culture helps us understand why different people achieve that success in different ways. Culture is not separate from contemporary safety thinking. It is one of the lenses through which people make sense of work.
Leadership lessons from Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Cultures
Whakapapa matters here. It is often translated as genealogy, but it is broader than that. It is about identity, ancestry, belonging and understanding where we fit within a wider network of relationships. It reminds us that people do not arrive at work as isolated individuals. They arrive carrying family histories, community connections, values and experiences that shape how they see the world.
Across Māori and many Pacific cultures, relationships sit at the centre of leadership. While the language and traditions differ, common themes emerge around belonging, collective responsibility, respect, service and care for others. Māori principles such as whanaungatanga and manaakitanga reflect these values. Whanaungatanga reminds us that trust grows through genuine relationships. Manaakitanga reminds us that care, respect and leadership are demonstrated through actions rather than titles or position. These are not soft ideas; they are practical leadership principles.
These lessons are not unique to New Zealand. Similar themes can be found across many Pacific cultures, including Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and the Cook Islands, where family, community, reciprocity and collective wellbeing often sit alongside individual achievement. Many of these values are equally present within Western workplaces, where teamwork, trust, mentoring and shared responsibility are often recognised as foundations of effective leadership. The language may differ, but the leadership lesson remains remarkably similar: people are more willing to listen, contribute and support one another when strong relationships exist.
These ideas align closely with Edmondson's work on psychological safety. People are more likely to contribute, raise concerns and share ideas when they feel respected, valued and connected to those around them. Indigenous Australian cultures offer another leadership lesson. Deep listening, storytelling, observation and learning through relationships have supported communities for thousands of years. These are not alternatives to contemporary safety practice. They are reminders that people have always transferred knowledge, understood risk and learned from experience through conversation and shared stories.
Safety has always relied on storytelling. Today we call them toolbox talks, pre-starts, incident investigations and learning reviews. The names may have changed, but the purpose remains the same. Stories help people understand context, remember lessons and make sense of the world around them. Despite their differences, Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Australian perspectives point us towards a common leadership truth: people are more likely to listen, learn, contribute and care when they feel connected, respected and understood.
Working in Papua New Guinea allowed me to view leadership through a broader lens. With more than 800 languages and countless leadership structures, influence didn’t always sit with the person who held the title. The Wantok system and the Big Man concept reinforced that formal authority and informal influence are not the same thing. Sometimes the person everyone followed wasn’t the supervisor. It was the individual with community standing, age, reputation or tribal connection.
Every workplace has informal leaders. You can spot them quickly. They’re the people others turn to when something doesn’t feel right. They might be operators, tradespeople or long-serving team members with no formal authority at all. Yet when they speak, people listen. Good leaders recognise this dynamic. Exceptional leaders work with it. They understand that influence doesn’t always follow the organisational chart, and they use those relationships to strengthen communication and decision-making.
Leadership has always begun with understanding people
Throughout history, successful leaders have recognised that influence depends as much on understanding people as it does on having authority. Long before we spoke about psychological safety, human factors or organisational culture, leaders were trying to answer the same question: How do you bring people together to achieve a common purpose?
More than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu explored this idea in The Art of War. He wasn't writing about safety, and he certainly wasn't writing about modern multicultural workplaces. He was writing about leadership, influence and understanding people in complex and uncertain environments.
The context has changed, but the leadership challenge remains remarkably familiar. The same lesson appears in many places. Māori concepts such as whanaungatanga and manaakitanga. PNG leadership structures like Wantok and Big Man influence. Indigenous storytelling and deep listening. Modern HOP, Learning Teams and human factors. Different language, same leadership truth: people make sense of work through relationships, experience and culture.
Safety leaders do not need to become historians or cultural experts. History simply reminds us that influence has always depended on knowing the people in front of you.
Language in the workplace
Language also plays a role in culture. In New Zealand, workplaces are increasingly encouraged to use simple phrases in te reo Māori. Not as tokenism, but as a way of showing respect, strengthening connection and keeping Indigenous culture alive. A greeting like “kia ora”, a farewell like “mā te wā”, or a simple “ngā mihi nui” can shift the tone of a conversation.
Language influences how people feel, how they engage and how they interpret intent. The same applies in Australia when leaders acknowledge Indigenous perspectives or use local terms appropriately. Authenticity matters. Forced or performative behaviour shuts people down.
Genuine care, kindness and curiosity open people up. None of this is about tokenism or pretending to be something you’re not. People see through that instantly. It’s about being authentic, caring and genuinely interested in the people you lead. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way; most leaders have. What matters is learning from those moments and recognising that culture isn’t a barrier to safety. It’s a doorway into better communication, stronger relationships and more effective leadership.
So what does this mean for safety?
Culture influences how people arrive at work, while leadership influences how they work together once they get there. Australian workplaces still operate under one legal framework, and cultural diversity does not change the requirement to manage risk, implement critical controls or follow safe systems of work.
What it can change is how people interpret information, respond to supervision, raise concerns and participate in learning. A workforce may share the same procedures, yet workers can still hear the same message differently because they bring different experiences, expectations and perspectives to the job.
This is where leadership matters. Training, inductions, coaching, supervision and everyday conversations help bridge the gap between organisational requirements and individual experience. Effective leaders recognise that safety is not just about what is communicated, but also about how that communication is received, understood and acted upon.
A culturally safe workplace does not lower standards or create different rules for different people. It creates an environment where people feel respected, understood and confident enough to contribute to the safety of themselves and those around them. When that happens, communication improves, trust grows and valuable information is more likely to flow in both directions.
Why leaders should care
Safety has always been about people. Procedures, training, critical controls and systems matter, but they only become effective when people understand them, trust them and use them as intended. That is why culture matters. Not because leaders need to become experts in every culture represented in their workforce, but because culture helps explain how people communicate, how they view authority, how they build trust and how they make sense of risk. These factors influence whether workers speak up, whether concerns are shared and whether lessons are learned.
The best leaders remain curious. They take time to understand why behaviour makes sense to the person performing it. They resist the temptation to assume that silence means agreement, that resistance means unwillingness or that confidence means competence. Instead, they ask questions, listen carefully and seek to understand the context behind the behaviour.
This aligns closely with the work of Dekker, Weick and Edmondson, all of whom remind us that understanding context is critical to understanding performance. Culture does not replace these ideas. It provides another lens through which leaders can better understand the people doing the work. Ultimately, organisations benefit most when they understand and harness the different strengths, perspectives and experiences their people bring to work. When leaders understand their people, communication improves, trust grows, information flows more freely and operational performance often improves alongside safety.
What leaders can do tomorrow
Start by becoming curious about the people you lead. Every worker arrives with a different set of experiences, relationships, expectations and cultural influences that shape how they communicate, learn, respond to authority and perceive risk. Taking the time to understand those differences often reveals more than another procedure or presentation ever will.
Pay attention to how information flows through your workplace. The people with the most influence are not always those with the highest position. Informal leaders, respected operators and trusted team members often shape attitudes and behaviours long before a supervisor enters the conversation. Engaging these people can strengthen communication, improve trust and increase workforce participation.
Invest in relationships before you need them. Whether it is whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, Wantok or simply good leadership, the lesson is remarkably similar. People are more likely to listen, contribute, challenge unsafe decisions and support change when trust already exists. Trust cannot be demanded in a crisis. It is built over time through consistent actions, genuine interest and mutual respect.
Think carefully about how you communicate. Procedures, presentations and standards remain important, but people often learn best through conversation, storytelling, practical examples and shared experience. Effective communication is not achieved when a message is delivered. It is achieved when the message is understood.
Most importantly, adapt the way you communicate without lowering expectations. Critical controls remain critical controls and standards remain standards. Good leaders simply recognise that different people may require different approaches to fully understand what is expected of them and why it matters.
When leaders understand their people, communication improves. When communication improves, trust grows, information flows more freely and people are more willing to participate in the conversations that prevent harm. The outcome is not just better safety. It is stronger teamwork, improved decision making and better operational performance.
Example in action
A supervisor notices a new worker rarely speaks during pre-start meetings. Rather than assuming disengagement, they take the time to build a relationship and learn more about the worker's background. They discover the worker comes from an environment where publicly challenging authority is considered disrespectful. The supervisor adjusts their approach, checks in privately and creates opportunities for one-on-one discussion.
Within a few weeks the worker begins raising concerns and contributing ideas that improve the job plan and help the team better manage risk.
Nothing changed in the standard; the communication changed.
So what can we learn from culture?
It is not that culture changes the rules, the standards or the controls. It influences how people understand them.
Culture shapes how people build trust, communicate concerns, respond to authority, share knowledge and participate in learning. Understanding those influences helps leaders create workplaces where communication is stronger, trust runs deeper and information flows more freely.
We often talk about safety culture as something organisations create. Yet every worker brings culture with them long before they arrive at the gate. Family, community, language, experience and life history all influence how people hear, interpret and respond to safety.
Safety systems only work when people can understand them, trust them and use them. Culture shapes that process long before a worker arrives at the gate. “The greatest opportunity may not be changing our safety systems; it may be understanding the people those systems are designed to protect.”
References
Dekker, S. (2014). The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error (3rd ed.). CRC Press.
Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations (2nd ed.). Sage.
Safe Work Australia. (2023). Model Code of Practice: Work Health and Safety Consultation, Cooperation and Coordination.
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2015). Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World (3rd ed.). Wiley.
