It’s common knowledge among safety coordinators that a company’s safety culture impacts the number of injuries, illnesses and fatalities its workers suffer. One aspect of safety culture is whether workers feel free to raise safety concerns to their superiors. A recent study, Silent Danger: The Five Crucial Conversations that Drive Workplace Safety, looked at avoidable hazards in the workplace that workers are often aware of but are either unable or unwilling to discuss.

VitalSmarts Study

The study by VitalSmarts, a Utah-based consultant, uncovered five workplace threats that are especially likely to persist as “undiscussables” in safety-conscious organizations throughout the US. Researchers interviewed and conducted focus groups with more than 1,600 frontline workers, managers and safety directors across thirty companies to find and analyze patterns of poor communication that threatened workplace safety. They then verified these patterns through a survey of 1,500 employees across all levels of 22 different organizations to test whether and how breakdowns in communication were confronted and to test the impacts these breakdowns had on workplace safety.

The Study’s Results

The study found that a whopping 93% of employees say their workgroup is currently at risk from one or more of five undiscussables or “accidents waiting to happen.” And nearly half are aware of an injury or death caused by these workplace dangers.

The five “undiscussable” threats are unsafe practices:

1. Justified by tight deadlines
2. That stem from a lack of certain skills
3. That are justified as exceptions to the rule
4. That bypass precautions considered excessive
5. Justified as good for the team, company or customer.

The astonishing and troubling finding is that when employees see one of these five threats, only one in four speak up. This failure to speak up and correct unsafe conditions allows these risks to continue despite the inevitability of injury.

Getting Workers to Talk

The problem isn’t that speaking up doesn’t work but that it doesn’t happen. When these “silent dangers” become discussable—when the norm changes from ignoring to confronting—the unsafe behavior stops. In fact, according to the study, when people speak up, 82% say their actions result in a safer work environment for everyone. Bottom line: Senior management needs to change corporate cultures that stifle workers’ willingness and ability to speak up and confront unsafe practices.