What Real Safety Culture Looks Like — And Why Most Companies Miss It
Most manufacturers claim safety is their top priority. But if you’ve spent any time on the floor, you know it’s not always true.
I recently spoke with Bruce Gane, a safety professional with two decades of experience across the military, construction, and manufacturing. His perspective? Clear-eyed and refreshingly blunt.
He recalled when he was pulled aside by a facility manager after an incident. The manager was blunt: “Safety isn’t really first. It’s the money.” That wasn’t just one person’s opinion. Bruce told me that at company after company, their actions showed him that safety consistently came third, after productivity and quality.
It’s the kind of honesty that’s easy to ignore until someone says it out loud. That’s why I wanted to talk with Bruce: he’s seen the shift from box-checking to daily habits that make safety visible.
Here’s what Bruce had to say about what safety looks like when it works, and why so many companies miss it.
What Most Companies Think Safety Culture Means
Many companies point to completed OSHA training or signed-off procedures as proof of a strong safety program. But as Bruce Gane sees it, that’s only the first step. It often gives a false impression that risks are being managed.
“What safety and manufacturing get wrong,” he said, “is thinking that we’re going to look at OSHA compliance requirements, talk about them, and train on them, all our problems are going to go away.”
Bruce explained that training records and certifications don’t automatically translate into safe behaviors on the floor. In his experience, people often behave differently when a safety rep is present. That’s performance, not culture.
Real safety culture means checking whether people apply the training, not just whether they passed it. Bruce often runs unannounced walkthroughs after training to see if the expected behaviors are taking place. If they’re not, that’s where the real work begins.
Safety Isn’t Just About Avoiding Citations
Bruce also called out companies that treat OSHA as the only thing that matters. Their mindset? If there’s no citation, there’s no problem.
But Bruce has walked into facilities where teams had no idea what their injury rate was. “If you don’t even know,” he said, “you don’t care.”
The problem isn’t just missing data. It’s what that silence says about leadership. If management isn’t tracking performance or doesn’t even ask, it sends a message to everyone else that safety is a formality, not a focus.
In some cases, Bruce said, companies will only fix a hazard if OSHA shows up. Fixing problems only when OSHA shows up may reduce fines, but it won’t stop future injuries.
What Real Safety Culture Looks Like
Bruce doesn’t assume safety training works. He checks. When he walks through a facility after a session, he watches how people behave, not just whether they checked a box.
In one case, he described walking into rooms where everyone would suddenly put on their PPE. “People behave differently when safety shows up,” he said. “That means they’re only performing, not practicing.”
If safety practices only kick in when someone’s watching, the culture hasn’t changed. That’s why Bruce emphasizes verification. He isn’t there to catch people. He’s there to see if the training stuck. If it hasn’t, the problem isn’t with the workers. It’s with the system around them.
Safety Is Listening to Workers, Even When It Sounds Like Complaints
One of the most revealing moments in our conversation was Bruce’s story about a site’s anonymous comment box. One submission said the bathroom smelled bad. It didn’t sound like a safety issue. But when Bruce checked, it was.
Behind the wall, he found a collapsed ventilation system. It served three rooms: the two bathrooms and an O₂ cleaning room where employees used high-pressure nitrogen to dry parts. “They would’ve been asphyxiated and died,” Bruce said. A complaint about a smelly bathroom had uncovered a potentially fatal hazard.
That experience reinforced something simple but often overlooked: every observation matters. Whether it’s labeled as a complaint, a suggestion, or an offhand comment, Bruce treats it as input. “You respond to it all,” he said.
Listening is active. It’s how small issues get caught before they turn serious.
Safety Is Built on Relationships
Bruce knows how hard it can be to get through to people who see you as “just the safety guy.” That’s why he works to build trust long before an incident happens.
At one facility, he started telling dad jokes. A new one, every day, pulled from a list on his phone. It was a small thing, but over time, people started looking forward to them. And between the laughs, they started listening.
Bruce also focuses on finding common ground, military service, family, faith, and uses genuine conversation to connect. “Really working with people and letting them know that you care, and being genuine goes a long way,” he explained. That’s how you stop being seen as a safety cop, and start being someone they trust.
What Happens Without Real Safety Culture
There’s a triangle Bruce likes to use: safety, quality, and productivity. He described them as equally important, like legs on a table. Lose one, and the whole thing tips.
He’s seen companies try to push safety to the side when deadlines tighten or margins shrink. One of them didn’t pretend otherwise.
In that kind of environment, safety becomes conditional. It’s something you support when it’s convenient, not when it’s difficult. The result is a workplace stuck in reaction mode, fixing hazards only after someone gets hurt.
When safety depends on the situation, not the standard, it starts to erode morale. And over time, it creates patterns of risk the company may not even notice.
You Might Hit Metrics, and Still Fail
Bruce once joined a company that couldn’t get insured. Their safety record had fallen so far that no provider would cover them. He got to work fixing it, building training plans, enforcing accountability, and documenting improvements.
They got back in compliance. Insurance returned. On paper, things looked fine.
“Once we accomplished that and they reached their goal,” Bruce said, “they got rid of me.”
He was let go. But the improvements didn’t last. Without sustained leadership and cultural reinforcement, the system started to slip. A customer later died at their site. The company went out of business.
It’s one of the hardest outcomes Bruce shared. And it’s a reminder: metrics like insurance status or audit scores don’t tell the whole story. They’re only as strong as the culture behind them.
Conclusion
You won’t find real safety culture in a mission statement.
You’ll find it in quiet habits, small follow-ups, and tough decisions made under pressure. In leaders who walk the floor after the audits are done. In the ones who take anonymous feedback seriously, even when it seems small.
Bruce didn’t measure safety by checklists or citations. He looked at whether people cared.
You could see it in how he listened, how he followed up, and how people started to trust him.
If you want a better picture of what that looks like in practice, I’d recommend listening to the full episode with Bruce Gane.
