Does your workplace foster a culture of continuous improvement?
Safety professionals have “a very pivotal role,” according to Lori Guasta, senior director of consulting operations at the National Safety Council.
“Safety pros connect people with processes,” she said. “They’re liaisons. They help align goals across the organization, across operations to maintenance, human resources, IT and various levels of leadership.
“Safety pros can be change agents.”
Guasta recently joined the Safety+Health editorial team for an episode of its “On the Safe Side” podcast to talk continuous improvement in the safety landscape. She answered questions about the benefits of continuous improvement, common challenges to implementation and more.
The Guasta interview begins at the 4-minute mark.
The following is an edited excerpt of Guasta’s interview.
How would you define continuous improvement? What are the major benefits for worker health and safety?
Guasta:
Continuous improvement for health and safety is about seeking ways to reduce risk by improving practices and fostering a culture within an organization that’s focused on learning.
A lot of us have heard of becoming a “learning organization.” That requires an environment that is committed to accountability, innovation and results.
Committing to continuous improvement within an organization can help identify and mitigate hazards earlier, often before an incident occurs. In that vein, we can see reductions in the potential for serious incidents and fatalities, or SIFs, which is a big focus for NSC this year and moving forward. (For more on SIFs, check out the NSC Thought Leadership column in the July 2025 issue.)
Promoting that proactive and learning culture is a key benefit to worker health and safety when we commit to and drive continuous improvement. And this is where all employees, from the frontline workforce to senior leadership, feel empowered and engaged to raise concerns and suggest improvements. That’s what continuous improvement is all about.
Finally, driving operational excellence: We know that safer workplaces tend to be more efficient and reliable. We see the improvements in quality, productivity and even profitability.
What are some common challenges to implementing continuous improvement? How can those be addressed?
Guasta:
The concept of continuous improvement might seem simple, but the implementation, or the execution, can be quite challenging. Some of the common barriers that we see first involve cultural resistance to change. People have to be convinced that a change is good.
Nobody likes to feel the organization is trying to change them. They’re more receptive, however, when they’re engaged to tackle a change that everybody is exposed to. It’s about crafting a message to tackle the barrier of cultural resistance.
Another key driver for success in any continuous improvement effort is leadership alignment. Leaders set the tone for an organization. They’re instrumental in defining expectations for workers across the entire organization and holding people accountable.
The last barrier is insufficient data or feedback loops to inform decisions and measure progress that’s connected directly to a continuous improvement effort.
So, what can we do? How can we tackle these barriers?
- Creating a psychologically safe environment where employees feel comfortable speaking up is really foundational to success.
- Creating a learning organization where workers feel engaged and they see the fruits of their labor – if they’re going to say something, that leaders are responsive and they’re listening and workers are seeing action as a result.
- Investing in training teams.
- Learning how to think differently – how to think from a systems perspective, for example – and how to do root cause analysis.
- Establishing clear structures for reporting and for evaluating, where we can glean insights from different levels of the organization and then act on those.
We really need to use risk-based data to inform learning. For example, what do our near-miss reporting trends tell us? What are the perceptions around risk and safety from the frontline workers?
When leaders consistently ask, “How can we make things better here?” that sets that right tone across the organization and helps promote a learning culture and psychological safety.
What responsibilities do safety professionals have in the continuous improvement process?
Guasta:
It’s everyone’s responsibility. Everyone in the organization plays a pivotal role in driving continuous improvement, whether formally or informally, but safety pros have a unique opportunity to accelerate the success of continuous improvement.
First, they’re the facilitators of learning. Safety pros can help analyze incidents, near misses, trends, leading indicators and the value of other data. They can champion systems thinking and a risk-based approach to ensure improvements are targeting root causes, not just symptoms.
In a lot of my leadership training, I talk about frontline leaders being the primary change agent in an organization. I put safety pros in that same category. They build trust. They show the value of collaboration, which again comes back to fostering that learning organization and that positive safety culture we want to see.
Final point here, specifically related to their roles: Safety pros have a duty to constantly look for ways to reduce risk.
The most effective way that I have witnessed this in action is through this partnership with frontline leaders or by safety pros leading improvements at the front line, partnering with workers exposed to the risks that can kill or hurt them.
They’re the folks doing the work, so partnering with them to ensure, first, a safe work environment, but then listening to their suggestions and ideas for enhancement is really where the rubber meets the road.
