Key Takeaways:

• The levels of safety maturity — Pathological, Reactive, Compliance, Proactive, and Transformative — represent a progression in organizational leadership mindset and strategic priority regarding safety.
• Pathological organizations actively resist safety measures, while Transformative ones embed safety into every part of their operations, making it a core value.
• Organizations at the reactive level may often sincerely wish to improve their workplace safety, yet lack the ability to consistently guide their organization toward basic levels of compliance as well as lack consistency in reporting as it relates to injuries or safety events.
• While compliance with regulations forms a necessary baseline, it does not inherently ensure a safe environment; proactive approaches are required to monitor and mitigate  risks.
• Proactive organizations prioritize a systems approach and continuous improvement by leveraging data to anticipate risks and prevent incidents before they occur.
• The ultimate goal of safety maturity is a Transformative culture, where safety is collaboratively embedded across all operations, driven by innovation, and supported as a strategic priority.

Introduction: Understanding the Levels of Safety Maturity

In our previous post, we explored the historical eras of safety, illustrating how safety practices have evolved from reactive to engineering, compliance to proactive, evidence-driven approaches. Now, we turn to the specific levels of safety maturity — Pathological, Reactive, Compliance, Proactive, and Transformative — which represent an organization’s mindset and approach to safety.

Each level reflects a different leadership view and organizational thinking about safety. Organizations at the Pathological level often resist safety measures, while those at the Transformative level fully integrate safety into every part of their operations. While compliance provides a necessary baseline, simply meeting regulatory standards doesn’t always ensure a safe environment. Moving beyond compliance allows organizations to adopt proactive measures that genuinely reduce risks and build a stronger safety culture.

In this post, we’ll examine each level’s distinct characteristics and leadership mindsets. As you read, consider where your organization currently stands and the steps needed to progress toward a Transformative safety culture, where safety is embedded as a core value.

Pathological Level:  Actively Resist  

At the Pathological level of safety maturity, organizations view safety as a burden or obstacle, often ignoring or actively resisting safety measures. Safety concerns are either dismissed outright or concealed, and there is little to no discussion about improving worker protection. Leaders at this level are primarily focused on avoiding penalties or inspections rather than addressing real risks.

This level is often marked by a culture of “active resistance,” where accountability is absent, and any incidents may quickly be swept under the rug. In some cases, organizations at the Pathological level may even attempt to hide incidents or avoid reporting them altogether, creating an environment of mistrust and low morale among workers.

Pathological organizations often operate with inherently higher levels of risk, where safety is seen as an inconvenience rather than a strategic capability for performance. Without a commitment to basic safety practices, they remain vulnerable to accidents, regulatory action, and high turnover. Moving up from this level requires a fundamental shift in mindset, recognizing safety as essential to both ethical responsibility and sustainable business success.

Reactive Level: Point and Blame

At the Reactive level of safety maturity, organizations recognize the need for safety but lack strategy and capability to focus on intervention and meaningfully responding to and recording incidents for effective management. Safety management is primarily reactionary — addressing problems as they arise rather than proactively preventing them or learning from incidents for basic compliance requirements or improvement. Leaders at this level are often caught in “point and blame” methods when responding to injuries, equipment failures, or spills without a structured approach to avoiding future incidents.

Organizations at this stage may have experienced rapid growth or changes that outpace their existing methods of planning, communication, and business coordination to better manage safety. They may lack the resources or knowledge to implement effective safety systems, leaving them scrambling to manage increased risks. Although there is a basic honesty about their limitations, they often view safety failures as fault of the workforce, rather than as a strategic priority to engage the workforce as part of the solution

The Reactive level is characterized by short-term fixes rather than long-term solutions. Moving beyond this stage requires establishing foundational safety practices, understanding and achieving basic compliance requirements for health and safety management, and then beginning to think systematically about potential risks, setting the groundwork for a proactive approach to safety management.

Compliance Level: Try Harder – Fail Less

At the Compliance level of safety maturity, organizations meet the minimum regulatory standards but lack vision and desire to go beyond basic requirements. Safety is managed to satisfy legal obligations, and leaders often approach it with a message of “Try harder, fail less!” mindset as safety is viewed as a mere compliance to achieve rather than performance improvement. Focus may be on avoiding penalties and post-incident statistics rather than enhancing safety outcomes. Compliance-oriented organizations have foundational practices in place, such as training, incident tracking, and reporting, but don’t explore ways to improve beyond regulatory standards in terms of how they actively monitor, assess and improve the controls required to achieve safe work

The Compliance level marks an essential foundation for safety but does not view safety as a performance driver. Organizations at this stage see safety as a set of rules to follow, collecting lagging indicator metrics that inform the organization of what happened retroactively while lacking any prescriptive, specific methods to improve. To progress, they need to adopt more proactive measures, analyze lagging indicators while focusing on leading indicators that create safety assurance, and foster a mindset that sees safety as integral to operational success.

Proactive Level: Elevating Partnerships

At the Proactive level of safety maturity, organizations move beyond compliance, actively seeking ways to improve safety before incidents occur. Leaders at this stage understand their operations well, creating mechanisms to gain feedback from all members of their workforce, as well as using lagging and leading indicators to actively monitor risk, and determine if they are improving. Safety is no longer just about meeting minimum standards; it’s about anticipating error and risk multipliers within their work and business systems, and actively evaluating the controls necessary to maintain safe work.  

This level reflects a shift toward continuous improvement, with leaders fostering a culture where workers are viewed as the solution to better safety, rather than the problem to solve. This creates an inclusive environment where the ‘worker’ includes not just traditionally employed workers but contractors, sub-contractors, and even temporary workers as part of a shared work system. Increasing expectations for safety practice and communications regarding third-party labor providers is a natural and necessary next step to achieve this level of maturity.  

Leaders at the Proactive level build connected relationships with employees, involving them in well-known and established Safety Management System practices such as the Plan-Do-Check-Act methods (PDCA) for safety planning, activities, review, and decision-making. This collaborative approach helps create an inclusive organizational culture where workers feel empowered to report risks and suggest improvements, which is critically important in a joint-employer work environment. It leverages a powerful component, yet basic element, of an effective safety management system called ‘Leader/Worker Participation.”  

Moving forward from this stage means integrating safety into all aspects of the organization, including evaluating the technology stack and systems used for gaps, setting the groundwork for a truly Transformative safety culture.  

Transformative Level: Collaboration and Innovation

At the Transformative level of safety maturity, safety is deeply embedded in the organization’s culture and strategic vision. Here, safety is not seen as a separate function but as an integral part of every aspect of operations, reflecting a collaborative and innovative approach to risk management. Leaders at this level champion safety as a core business value, intentionally evaluate worker feedback for risk monitoring and improvement, and foster a culture where safety is actively supported and reinforced across all levels.

Transformative organizations rely on ‘clean safety data’ from both leading and lagging indicators to continually improve safety practices. They engage in partnerships beyond the company — working closely with contractors, suppliers, and even community organizations — to promote a shared commitment to safety. This level also emphasizes cross-functional collaboration, where meaningful safety performance discussions alongside departments such as procurement, operations, and HR work in sync to support a holistic approach to safety, often recognizing their shared needs for both strategy, technology and overall strategic support

At this highest level, safety becomes a source of organizational pride, where every employee understands and contributes to safety goals. The Transformative level represents the pinnacle of safety maturity, where continuous learning, adaptability, and proactive planning define the culture, creating a resilient organization capable of facing evolving safety challenges.

Conclusion: Advancing Toward a Transformative Safety Culture

Understanding the five levels of safety maturity — from Pathological to Transformative — offers a useful framework for evaluating your organization’s approach to safety while aligning safety practice and innovation toward well-established safety management systems, such as ANSI Z-10 or ISO 45001. Progressing through these stages allows companies to move beyond basic compliance and create a resilient, proactive safety culture. At the highest level, safety becomes embedded in every aspect of the business, fostering an environment where continuous improvement, collaboration, and innovation drive safety outcomes.

Knowing where your organization or supply chain stand, however, is only the beginning. In our next blog, we’ll introduce Avetta’s Safety Maturity Index — a tool specifically designed to help companies advance their suppliers along these maturity stages. Using leading indicators to identify gaps in safety practices, the index pinpoints areas where improvement is needed to reduce the occurrence of serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). This index offers a strategic approach to elevating your supply chain’s safety maturity, providing actionable insights that make transformative safety attainable.

Watch Our Safety Maturity Webinar!

If you would like to learn more about safety maturity and how your organization can evolve toward becoming truly transformative in your approach to safety, watch our recent webinar Breaking Barriers: Going Beyond Traditional Risk Management.

Avetta is a SaaS software company providing supply chain risk management solutions. Avetta’s platform is trusted by over 130,000 suppliers in over 120 countries. Visit Avetta.com to learn about how our new Safety Maturity Index can help you go beyond compliance and prequalification.

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