Blackline survey finds safety budgets rise despite gap

Blackline Safety has published a global workplace safety survey showing that 95% of safety leaders plan to maintain or increase budgets over the next two years.

The findings are based on a study of 200 senior safety and operations professionals at companies with at least 500 employees. Conducted by NewtonX, the research covers organisations across global markets.

The survey highlights a continuing tension between safety spending and day-to-day workplace practice. While 97% of respondents said workplace safety is fundamental to reliable productivity, 64% reported a gap between formal safety protocols and real-world behaviour.

The findings come against a backdrop of persistently high levels of workplace injuries and illnesses, with respondents indicating that investment alone has not closed longstanding gaps in execution.

Budget focus

Training emerged as the top budget priority, cited by 46% of respondents. Workforce engagement followed at 41%, while 34% pointed to infrastructure improvements to reduce risk, 30% identified new technology, and 29% highlighted internal advocacy to raise the perceived value of safety within their organisations.

The results suggest companies are placing greater emphasis on workforce behaviour and communication, rather than focusing only on equipment or compliance measures. Nearly a third of those surveyed said better training could improve worker trust, particularly when it is relevant, continuous, and two-way rather than delivered through a top-down process.

Trust was a recurring theme in the findings. Leaders said only 36% of workers have a great deal of trust in their companies' tools and procedures, although 92% were reported to have at least some level of trust.

Culture gap

Christine Gillies, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Blackline Safety, said the data points to a broader shift in how businesses view safety.

She said the survey showed that the majority of experts support a change in safety culture across industries.

"As a result, we'll see safety increasingly becoming a holistic, enterprise-wide operating system instead of a compliance function, and companies that treat it this way will close the protocol-behavior gap, creating safer and more productive workplaces."

Gillies linked the gap between protocol and practice to operational disconnects within organisations. Respondents pointed to weak links between people, process, and technology, limited understanding of day-to-day site conditions among those who design protocols, and the addition of processes that do not address root causes.

She also outlined the main components respondents associated with a stronger safety culture. 

According to Gillies, three pillars make up a strong safety culture – training and communication, tools and technology, and data and reporting.

"Most organizations have all three, yet few have them working together, which means gaps persist even when investment increases," she said.

Targets and tools

The survey found that 76% of safety leaders said zero-incident goals remain common but are unrealistic. That suggests many organisations still frame safety performance around targets that senior practitioners do not view as fully attainable.

At the same time, respondents reported widespread use of multiple tools and devices to meet safety, compliance, and productivity needs. These include personal protective equipment, walkie-talkies or radios, and more advanced digital systems.

The data suggests adoption of tools is not translating neatly into confidence on the ground. The relatively low proportion of workers said to have strong trust in tools and procedures may help explain why increased spending has not eliminated concerns about behaviour, reporting, and consistency.

AI and analytics

Interest in artificial intelligence also featured strongly in the findings. Some 65% of leaders said they expect AI risk prediction tools to become increasingly important, while trust levels were highest for safety data analytics and reporting at 84%, followed by training and simulation at 83% and predictive risk analytics at 79%.

Even so, the research suggests many organisations still rely more heavily on historical review than forward-looking analysis. While 73% of respondents said they review incident reports and near-miss records, only 33.5% said they spend time on predictive analytics to forecast risk.

That gap may prove significant for employers trying to reduce repeat incidents. Reviewing reports remains common practice, but the lower use of predictive methods indicates that many safety teams have yet to incorporate more anticipatory approaches into routine decision-making.

Calgary-based Blackline Safety sells connected safety devices, gas monitoring products, and cloud-based software to industrial customers. It says it serves customers in more than 75 countries and has reported more than 323 billion data points and initiated more than eight million emergency alerts.

The survey's central finding is that companies appear willing to keep spending on safety, but many safety leaders still see unresolved weaknesses in training, trust, target-setting, and the integration of data, tools, and day-to-day practice.