By Bob Cummins, the Founder and CEO at Sodak

This is the second in a series of articles by Bob Cummins, founder and CEO of Sodak, exploring why safety culture needs to move beyond personal responsibility to collective accountability. In Part 1: Risk is Multiplied, Not Contained, Bob examined how risk radiates outward through organisations – and how tolerating small breaches creates the conditions for serious incidents. Here, he turns to the idea of “personal responsibility” itself, and asks whether it’s doing more harm than good.

Part 2: The Illusion of Personal Responsibility

The dominant narrative in safety has long been about personal responsibility. “Look after yourself. Make the right choice. Don’t cut corners.” It’s neat, it’s simple, and it feels empowering. But it’s also deeply flawed.

There are two main problems.

Problem 1: Injury is never just personal

At work, no injury is ever suffered in isolation. Consequences ripple outward – from the worker to their gang, their supervisor, their manager, the client, the subsidiary, the group. Even the language we often use – “that’s his risk,” “that’s her choice” – doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

If one person’s “personal choice” causes the whole gang to down tools, is it still personal? If the project deadline slips, the client relationship suffers, and a subsidiary director loses future contracts, is it still personal? If investors question the resilience of the group and share price wobbles, is it still personal?

Every injury, every act of non-compliance, is shared. The impact is collective, even if the trigger looked individual. And crucially, even when no injury occurs, repeated tolerance of “personal choices” builds a shared vulnerability. A supervisor who ignores one unclipped harness today makes it harder to enforce rules tomorrow. A board that waves away minor breaches in monthly reports is quietly writing permission slips for the next major incident.

Problem 2: Choices are never made in a vacuum

We like to imagine that workers freely “choose” whether to comply or not. But human behaviour is not made in a vacuum. It is shaped by environment.

Consider these forces that act on behaviour:

• Time pressure: When deadlines are unrealistic, people are nudged to take shortcuts.
• Peer behaviour: If the gang tolerates shortcuts, new joiners copy what they see.
• Supervision: If supervisors look the other way, tolerance becomes normalised.
• Tools and equipment: If the right PPE isn’t readily available or comfortable, workers improvise.
• Consequences: If unsafe acts are never challenged, they are silently reinforced.

In short, people respond to the environment around them. That’s not weakness, it’s human. Behavioural science shows us that environments exert far more influence than abstract notions of “personal responsibility.”

And here’s where tolerance links back in: every time a leader signs off a report full of “minor” breaches without acting, they create the environment that shapes future behaviour. Every unchallenged act is not just permitted, it is reinforced. The worker doesn’t see themselves as “choosing risk,” they see themselves as doing the job the way everyone else does it.

This is why “personal responsibility” is an illusion. It hides the truth: the causes of unsafe behaviour are systemic, and the consequences are collective.

Yes, individuals carry responsibility. But if that’s the only frame we use, we miss the bigger picture – and we allow leaders to abdicate theirs. Telling a worker “it’s your responsibility” is, in many cases, simply passing the buck.

Personal responsibility is the weakest shield we can give people. Collective responsibility is far stronger – shaping environments, setting higher standards, and refusing to tolerate small risks that ripple outward.