COLORADO – USDA Forest Service responds to every wildfire with the safety of the public and firefighters as the highest priority. Safety is a core value of the USDA Forest Service, and several safety initiatives, along with employee feedback over the years, have shaped the organizational culture of the agency. In the recent Rocky Mountain Research Station publication, The Development of an Organizational Safety Culture in the United States Forest Service, researchers examine changes in the safety culture of the agency over the past 100 years.

From 1910 through 1994, the Forest Service used engineered solutions for safety that relied on physical science to address the hazards of wildland fire suppression. Following a shift that the researchers described as cultural awareness, the Forest Service spent the next twenty-five years incorporating social science perspectives into managing workforce safety by understanding emergency fire incidents and mitigating vulnerabilities across all fields of work.

The team that produced this study includes the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Doctor David Flores, research social scientist, expert in sociology and culture, and Emily Haire, expert in organizational sociology. “The review brings together reports about several broad safety initiatives over the years, including employee feedback,” stated Flores. “The overall message is that the development of a safety culture has been a work in progress over the past 100 years and, while there have been missteps, the agency is continually working to improve.”

The publication chronicles how safety initiatives and development of a safety culture emerged in the USDA Forest Service, and the researchers describe the interconnectedness of safety initiatives with the national culture and history of wildfire suppression. A major observation of the account is, rather than being passive recipients, employees have questioned and shaped the Agency’s approach to safety and actively influenced the trajectory of safety initiatives.  When asked to speak up, they did so.

In addition, the researchers found that USDA Forest Service safety programs were first developed in the hazardous conditions of wildland fire but were later adapted for broader application. Recently, safety considerations have been applied through the more comprehensive concept of “well-being” in both fire and non-fire workplace environments, with attention to the routine risks of normal work experience across the agency’s field, office and laboratory settings.

“This article describes how the development of top-down safety initiatives are questioned and shaped by employees who actively influence the trajectory of a safety culture in the agency from the bottom-up,” Flores concludes. “This study uses the tools of social science research to advance the Forest Service as a learning organization where ongoing efforts are designed to uplift and empower employees through a respectful and safe working environment.”