Creating a safer culture around working at heights involves leadership commitment, active worker involvement, robust training, clear communication and innovative tools.

Falls are a leading cause of construction fatalities in Australia and globally. Across calendar 2023, Safe Work Australia reported that 29 workers lost their lives due to falls from height. This accounted for 15 percent of overall workplace fatalities over this period (2^nd only to vehicle incidents). It reflects a 32% increase on the 5-year average.

Shifting the culture around falls involves making safety a visible, shared priority at every level of the organisation. With the statistics showing little to no shift in the numbers of fatalities since 2018, we need to apply a new transformative lens to the problem. We need to accept that whilst our current approach has stemmed the flow, further changes are needed in order to achieve a more definitive improvement in outcomes. This involves using all tools at our disposal.

Leadership engagement

Strong leadership sets the tone for safety. Australian guidelines note that when leaders visibly commit to safety, workers ‘become more likely to follow safety procedures and raise safety issues, making health and safety part of culture’. Leaders should model safe behaviour (e.g. prioritising safety over productivity) and be personally involved in risk management and fall-prevention planning. For instance, WorkSafe NSW reports that supervisors who ‘lead by example by modelling and influencing appropriate safety behaviour (e.g. not preferring performance over safety) and follow through with safety training on site’ foster a positive culture.

Employers and leaders must take overall responsibility and make safety an everyday agenda. This includes holding regular safety meetings, walking the site and inspecting scaffolds or harnesses and ensuring that safety is discussed in all work conversations. Management should set clear policies based on safe design principles and the hierarchy of controls (e.g. eliminating unnecessary height work, mandating guardrails or harnesses above set heights) and should enforce accountability fairly. Safe Work Australia’s leadership principles advise leaders to ‘commit to safety’ and ‘encourage participation’ – embedding WHS in all business processes.

Worker participation

Engaging workers at all levels is crucial. This is not a new concept, and regulations have required consulting with workers on health and safety risks as a well-accepted process. But how much leaders value worker input and feedback isn’t always reflected in work practices. Building ‘channels for workers to speak up, report concerns, and contribute ideas’ (beyond passive toolbox talks) makes safety personal. For example, encouraging a strong near-miss and hazard reporting culture, where workers are listened to and acted on, helps to identify hidden fall risks early.

Workers share responsibility too: they must follow safe procedures, use equipment properly and be empowered to refuse unsafe work. Training site supervisors in positive coaching and peer mentoring also strengthens culture. A SafeWork NSW study found that training supervisors in fall prevention led to more interactive toolbox talks and higher compliance with fall protection. Ultimately, a safety culture is built from both the bottom up and top down. There is significant evidence that focused fatal-risk programs succeed because safety people provided the input, but the initiatives are driven by operational people under a process which engages all staff levels.

The key to positive input, engagement and cultural change hinges on empowerment. Fully trained, genuinely competent and confident workers are more likely to engage in problem-solving and to operate in a safe and productive manner.

Training and competence

Continuous, practical training underpins cultural change.

All workers (and especially supervisors) must be competent in fall-risk controls. Safe Work Australia’s Code of Practice emphasises that workers and supervisors ‘must have the skills to use [work positioning] systems safely’ and ensure that fall-arrest devices are used and maintained properly.

This involves regular refresher courses, simulations or toolbox talks – not just one-off inductions. For example, embedding hands-on fall-prevention scenarios in apprenticeships or toolbox training builds habit and awareness over time. WAHA have developed a verification of competency program for falls prevention using AI Adaptive Learning as a platform. This system identifies gaps in knowledge and provides teaching and correction. It ensures that genuine competencies are obtained. This contrasts with previous training approaches which have lacked transparency in this area.

Advanced training (e.g. safety management or design-focused courses) can be mandated for managers. Quality safety programs require demonstration of clear ‘work at height’ competencies for supervisors. Regulators identify that formal course completion and skill audits increase accountability. Embedding a licensing or permit system for height work (as NSW is exploring) is another procedural approach to ensure only trained people work at height. However, this is not a short-term solution and will require a full review of the existing RTO delivered training. In all training, it is important to include procedural drills (e.g. practising rescue from harnesses) and behavioural skills (like spotter teamwork). Whenever possible, tying training outcomes to real safety goals and fatal-risk awareness can lead to more resilient management systems, engaged operational leadership fewer high-potential incidents.

Addressing psychological barriers and resistance to learning

Changing safety culture also means overcoming psychological resistance to new behaviours and training. Workers may resist organisational policies or fall-prevention practices due to:

• Complacency or overconfidence (‘I’ve done this for 20 years without a fall’)
• Cultural norms that view safety as secondary to productivity
• Fear of embarrassment or judgement during training
• Perceived complexity or burden of equipment or policies
• Mistrust in management or a belief that rules are enforced inconsistently

Strategies to resolve these barriers are as follows:

• Use behavioural safety models. Integrate principles from behavioural psychology such as positive reinforcement, peer feedback and goal-setting to make safe actions habitual.
• Normalise vulnerability. In training sessions, encourage leaders and peers to share close calls or mistakes. This can help to reduce the stigma which can be associated with sharing these incidents.
• Design psychologically safe learning environments. Avoid punitive responses in training or coaching. Instead, create interactive, hands-on sessions where mistakes are part of the learning process. The WAHA AI Adaptive Learning program is an example of this approach.
• Use storytelling and lived experience. Case studies of real incidents or testimonials from injured workers often shift mindsets more effectively than data alone.
• Identify and involve informal leaders. Crew members who influence peers can be trained as safety ambassadors. This can help to promote the development of a safe culture via an informal means.
• Address cynicism with transparency: Demonstrate how worker input has led to real changes in procedures or equipment and follow through consistently.

Acknowledging these psychological realities improves the acceptance of training, reinforces safe habits, and helps shift entrenched workplace attitudes. It also helps to align daily behaviours with organisational WHS policies by fostering buy-in, not just compliance.

Communication and Consultation

Clear, two-way communication reinforces the message that safety is a shared priority. Regulators urge active consultation: leaders should openly discuss safety issues and listen to workers’ concerns. Toolbox talks, daily briefings and visible signage are basic steps, but culture change requires deeper dialogue. The ‘4 Cs’ emphasise communication as core: employers should hold safety briefings, visibly ‘walk the talk’ and invite feedback. Some regulators suggest making safety a topic of everyday conversation and even celebrating reported near-misses.

Regular safety walk-rounds with crews, where workers can point out fall hazards directly to supervisors, build transparency. Leaders should then close the loop by acting on feedback and acknowledging good catches. Digital tools (smartphone apps or messaging groups) can aid real-time alerts of hazards or equipment faults. The key is consistency: managers must routinely share incident learnings, track WHS KPIs publicly and continuously improve based on workers’ input. In short, communication should emphasize collaboration – supervisors sharing results of inspections or audits, and workers contributing to solutions – so that safety becomes part of normal workflow.

Innovation and Technology

Leveraging new technology can both reduce height risks and signal a modern safety culture. For example, drones can inspect roofs, scaffolds or confined spaces without sending workers aloft – removing the hazard entirely. Similarly, wearable sensors on helmets or harnesses can detect falls (ideal for remote workers) or worker fatigue; VR/AR simulations can safely train crews on complex height scenarios; and proximity alarms can warn workers before they reach an unguarded edge. These technologies also generate data for management to track high-risk exposures.

Organisations often adopt engineered controls as innovative safety. Examples can include temporary horizontal lifelines, EWPs, temporary platform or specially designed tension net systems. Australian regulations prioritise fall prevention (barriers, scaffolds) over harness-based solutions, but innovation and evolution of safety equipment (smart anchors, self-retracting lifelines) are creating more intuitive and integrated and complimentary systems. Even simple digital tools, like the adoption of dynamic electronic SWMS (Safe Work Method Statements) or incident-reporting apps, make consultation easier and show leadership commitment to using all means to protect workers. In all cases, technology should support (not replace) a participatory culture: leaders need to train crews on new systems and encourage suggestions (e.g. selecting new harness designs). Using tech visibly demonstrates management’s investment in safety and can motivate buy-in from all stakeholders.

Conclusion

These examples all align with the hierarchy of controls and behavioural engagement: eliminating heights, engineering safe platforms, providing training and equipment, and encouraging safe mindsets. By combining strong leadership, genuine worker participation, ongoing training, clear communication and targeted innovation, construction companies can begin shifting the culture and can turn working at height from being a dangerous chore into a managed, collaborative safety process.

By Scott Barber, CEO, Working At Heights Association of Australia

Scott is a purpose-driven CEO, marketer, writer, safety advocate, and SME, with over 20 years’ experience designing, driving and facilitating communication and education as fundamental engagement tools. He passionately believes we are stronger when we collaborate and strives to build partnerships and communities to facilitate positive change.

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