Fostering a Safety-First Culture for Frontline Workers – An Interview with KPA’s Jade Brainard
Jade Brainard
March 17, 2025
“Engaging frontline workers is essential for achieving a safety-first culture. This requires a holistic approach across an organization that prioritizes safety at every organizational level.
We’re talking about top floor to shop floor, C-suite to Craft. Every level of an organization being involved in the safety program to help ensure employees feel engaged. Because safety culture is about ensuring employees feel empowered, they feel accountable, and it really takes that holistic approach that the entire organization is committed to.
Most importantly, it needs to start with leadership and go from the top down. So, having that leadership commitment to grow and foster that culture across the organization is key.”
Do you have any examples that you can share of leadership initiatives that have worked well?
“Yes. Leadership is critical to driving that safety engagement. When we think about a change management process within an organization, change management happens all the time, right? Whether we’re changing engineering controls or operational processes, change management processes are structured approaches that an organization uses to plan, implement, and then to sustain these changes effectively by making minimal disruption and ensuring adoption.
Leaders are crucial to this process. And sometimes it goes by the wayside. We don’t consider safety culture or a safety program as change management within an organization.
Leaders really set the tone for the culture, so they demonstrate how important it is; and why safety is so important. And this could be things like doing safety walks. They have a visible presence with the frontline employees. Because sometimes, there can be a lack of trust from frontline employees, believing that management doesn’t understand what’s going on in the field, or is too far removed to really see the full picture.”
You mentioned that frontline workers sometimes don’t trust that leadership knows what’s going on. Do you have tips on how to address these barriers?
“We talked about the lack of trust, and that can really be overcome by participation, being visible, being present, participating in the program, and being on the frontline with those employees. But there are several other challenges that many organizations face.
One of them is the perception of safety as a burden. This is an extra step to my day. It’s going to add time to where I could skip steps and get this job done a lot faster if I didn’t have to follow this certain safety procedure.
So, perceiving safety as a burden is certainly a challenge. Also, there are communication barriers. You could have the best safety program or software in the world, but it has to be practical. For example, if we’re not providing communication avenues that are relevant to our workforce, or if we have a remote workforce but our safety program requires they go to an office each day and fill out some paperwork and handle things manually. That is just going to add to the problem of perceiving safety as a burden.”
How can tools like automation and real-time data improve the engagement and outcomes of these safety programs?
“We are all accustomed to having a device either near or on us at all times.
And that’s true for the entire workforce, whether you are on a job site, you have a phone accessible, you’re on a manufacturing floor, you have either computers or iPads or other things accessible to you. So now with that technology and the way things have gone, safety programs are now in the hands of everyone.
It is more accessible than ever before. It really helps overcome some of that perception of safety as a burden. I don’t have to dig through a binder for a form to fill out. I can open my phone.”
What are some strategies you’ve seen that enhance communication channels with frontline workers?
“It’s all about participation. Participation is about focusing on proactive engagement and proactive reporting, where we’re trying to capture things before something occurs, trying to capture near-miss reports, identifying hazards, and proactively understanding where our risk lies in the business.
That is what helps us really change a safety culture, to understand where we can make improvements, before something actually happens. By using technology, you can put safety in the hands of everyone. Make it easy for them to proactively report those leading indicators.
Our workforce has the ability to just take a photo, identify a workplace hazard while they’re headed to complete a job. I don’t have to go and fill out a report, to do that. Because the chances of that actually being reported are slim-to-none. So by making safety accessible, we are more likely to get participation.”
How are organizations getting frontline workers in the mindset of: “This is something that I can tackle now. It’s not a burden on my day.”
“Back to the question of how do we foster that two-way communication? We empower frontline workers by giving them a sense of ownership of safety practices.
Step one is putting the safety program in their hands, making it easy and practical, and encouraging participation. We do that through technology, but that two-way communication is very important to have a long-lasting impact.
We might be successful in getting the adoption of proactive reporting, but if our workforce doesn’t see any changes made as a result, or that there’s no response to their participation, we’re going to see participation decline over time. So, making sure that if a workplace hazard is reported, there’s a response back, “Hey, thanks for reporting that these are some changes that were made.”
Really allowing them to see the results and the action taken based on their participation is a great way to empower workers.
Also, involving them in the program itself, and the changes that are made. It may be involving them in risk assessments; no one knows the hazards or the risk of a job better than the frontline employees.”
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About the Author
Jade Brainard
KPA
Jade is the Senior Director of Product Management at KPA with 17 years of experience in B2B markets. Jade is a seasoned SaaS technology professional who has a true passion for solving complex business challenges and driving customer satisfaction through innovative software solutions. She’s a hands-on leader known for her strong communication skills and her unwavering focus on aligning product strategies with business objectives. Jade is here to share her insights on a critical topic, getting safety to the front lines.