Culture Is Either an Inoculation or a Trauma

You don’t always see it happening. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

Culture doesn’t blow a whistle when it starts to drift. It doesn’t flash red. It just quietly shifts, one interaction at a time. One shortcut. One look the other way. Then suddenly, the team that used to raise issues early now keeps quiet. The energy that once built trust now just… keeps the wheels turning.

Most people have experienced it. A team that looked fine on paper; safety systems in place, procedures laminated, no safety alerts. But five minutes into a team briefing, the vibe was unmistakable, quiet compliance. Not healthy tension. Not engagement. Just heads down. When you ask a couple of the crew how things are going, the response is automatic: “All good.” But it was too polished. Too safe.

Later, a team member confides, “We just don’t say much around here anymore. It’s easier that way.” 

That’s not culture. That’s trauma response.

When safety culture becomes performative, it stops being protective.

And here’s what the research shows. According to Safe Work Australia, low psychological safety leads directly to increased presenteeism, higher turnover, and more incidents. In environments where people feel unsafe to speak, minor risks go unreported, team cohesion suffers, and trust corrodes from the inside out. This is how preventable problems escalate into critical failures.

Culture isn’t neutral. It’s either inoculating people against stress, or it’s compounding it. It’s either helping them raise concerns, or teaching them to bury them.

Culture is either an inoculation or a trauma.

There is rarely a middle setting.

Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor and global authority on psychological safety, says it well:

“For knowledge work to flourish, the workplace must be one where people feel able to share their knowledge! This means sharing concerns, questions, mistakes, and half-formed ideas."

And in safety leadership, that applies tenfold.

Because when people can’t share the messy middle, including their uncertainties, discomforts, or even gut instincts, we lose the very thing that keeps us sharp: real human feedback.

This is where strong leadership matters. And not just from the top. Your presence, as a safety manager, is the culture. How you respond under pressure. How you acknowledge a close call. How you react when someone brings you bad news. That’s the culture people remember long after the posters fade.

It’s like pre-flight maintenance.

An aircraft can look flawless from the outside, clean, functional, flight ready. But skip the internal checks, ignore the small indicators, and you risk catastrophic failure mid-air. Culture is no different. If you’re not tuning into the early signs like fatigue, silence, conflict or disengagement you’re flying blind. And by the time the alarms go off, it’s often too late.

So, if you’re shaping culture (newsflash - you are), ask yourself: are you inoculating your people with trust? Or are you unconsciously reinforcing fear?

Because culture is always doing something.

The question is what are you doing?

Love to hear your thoughts.