PREVENTING HARM AT SOURCE
A practical approach to strengthening safety culture
Make safety risk visible: identify root causes, prioritise the right changes with What-If analysis, and track results.
When safety looks strong on paper, but risk persists in practice
Most organisations have robust safety policies, training, and reporting processes.
Incidents still happen because safety is shaped by the real conditions people work in: operational pressure, supervision, procedure usability, local norms, and how learning happens after near misses. The PYXIS Platform helps you identify the drivers and root causes of safety exposure, prioritise what to change using What-If analysis, and track leading indicators over time.
Strong procedures exist, but workarounds become routine under pressure
Training completion is high, but safe decisions don’t hold under real-world constraints
Reporting happens, but the same issues recur and learning loops break down
Board reporting focuses on lagging metrics, not what’s driving exposure
Blame culture keeps people from speaking up
Why safety programmes stall
If you’re investing time and effort but performance isn’t shifting, you’ll usually see one or more of these patterns:
This is where culture becomes practical
Safety culture is the set of organisational conditions that shape how people think about, prioritise and act on safety risk — especially when no one is watching!
When these drivers point in different directions, exposure rises — even in well-intentioned teams. It includes, and connects things like:
Leadership behaviour • Procedure design • Supervision quality • Time pressure • Peer norms • Stop-work confidence • Reporting climate • Contractor practices
See the map
Map safety exposure across people, procedures and work systems. Identify hotspots where risk is being created.
Target change
Identify root causes and use What-If analysis to prioritise the fixes that prevent harm.
Prove impact
Track leading indicators and KPIs so leaders and boards can see improvement before incidents occur.
How the PYXIS platform Works
Shortcuts become normalised
Pressure and familiarity quietly shift the boundary of safe work.
Near misses stay unreported
People hold back when blame, friction, or doubt exists.
Procedures don’t match reality
Work-as-done drifts from work-as-imagined on the ground.
Actions close slowly
Hazards recur when fixes stall or verification is weak.
Supervision varies widely
Standards change by team, shift, supervisor, or site.
Contractor controls are patchy
Interfaces and handoffs create risk without clear ownership.
What we typically find
Even in mature safety programmes, exposure usually comes from the system people work in. Common patterns include:
Near miss reporting rate and speed
Whether risk is visible early, before harm occurs.
Hazard identification and closure time
How quickly issues are resolved and verified.
Repeat drivers and recurring themes
Whether the same causes recur across sites or teams.
Learning loop effectiveness
Evidence that investigations lead to system change.
Supervisor reinforcement signals
Frequency and quality of safety conversations on the job.
Permit-to-work and contractor indicators
Handoff quality, compliance trends, and control effectiveness.
What you can measure
PYXIS helps you move beyond lagging incident metrics by tracking leading indicators that show whether exposure is rising or falling:
Safety case study
The business case for safety culture
Organizations with excellent safety culture (score 95) save $1.48M annually compared to weak safety culture (score 40), representing a 194% improvement across all metrics.
Business Metric | Weak Culture (Score: 40) | Excellent Culture (Score: 95) | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
Profit margin | 8.5% | 14.6% | +6.1 points |
Total direct costs | $2,240,000 | $760,000 | 66% reduction |
Schedule delays | 22 days / year | 8 days / year | 64% reduction |
Number of accidents | 68 incidents / year | 23 incidents / year | 66% reduction |
Workers compensation costs | $680,000 | $230,000 | 66% reduction |
Lost work days | 360 days / year | 120 days / year | 67% reduction |
How PYXIS compares
Most organisations use a mix of approaches. PYXIS doesn’t replace them — it helps you understand what’s driving exposure and where change will have the biggest impact.
Good for:
Building baseline safety knowledge and reinforcement. Useful for onboarding, refreshers, and consistent safety messaging.
Often misses:
Measures outcomes, not causes. It rarely explains why shortcuts, silence, or drift become normal under pressure.
What PYXIS adds:
Identifies root causes across people, procedures and work systems. Prioritises changes that reduce exposure at source and improves leading indicators.
Good for:
Checking compliance, verifying controls, and spotting hazards in specific areas. Useful for assurance and accountability.
Often misses:
Findings become lists, not insight. Audits don’t show which drivers are creating exposure day-to-day.
What PYXIS adds:
Maps hotspots and systemic drivers behind repeat findings. Helps leaders focus on interventions that prevent recurrence, not just rework.
Good for:
Setting standards, responsibilities and governance. Useful for regulatory alignment and management system assurance.
Often misses:
Shows what “should” happen, not what does happen. It rarely explains why issues repeat or where culture is weakening.
What PYXIS adds:
Connects governance to measurable drivers and leading indicators. Helps leaders prioritise change and evidence improvement beyond compliance.
Good for:
Aligning stakeholders and kick-starting change. Helpful for strategy, engagement, and surfacing issues through interviews.
Often misses:
Momentum can fade once the programme ends. Without measurement, it’s hard to prioritise actions or prove impact.
What PYXIS adds:
Ongoing insight into drivers and root causes across the safety ecosystem. Uses What-If analysis and dashboards to sustain progress over time.
FAQs
Improving safety culture with PYXIS
Safety culture is the conditions that shape safe practice: leadership, supervision, procedures, work pressure, reporting climate and norms.
No. Surveys describe perceptions. PYXIS focuses on the drivers behind outcomes and supports prioritised, measurable change.
Because procedures don’t always match real work. When pressure and friction collide, people adapt — and risk rises.
They are early warning signals. They show weakening controls and rising exposure before serious harm occurs.
The upstream conditions creating exposure: supervision, work design, procedure usability, time pressure, norms, and learning loops.
It supports prioritisation. Leaders can model which changes prevent harm fastest and where effort will be wasted.
Yes. Visual mapping and leading indicators make safety risk easier to govern beyond lagging incident counts.
No. The work can be confidential. The value is clarity for internal decision-making and governance.
Leading indicators often move before incident rates, giving earlier feedback and control.
No. PYXIS helps you get more value from them by addressing the systemic drivers that undermine outcomes.