HOW DO YOU MEASURE WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE? MAKING SAFETY CULTURE TANGIBLE

With only a few days to go we are looking forward to the EHS for Biopharma Summit Europe (18th–20th November 2025), hosted by Hanson Wade. As a proud summit partner, Modig Corporate Services Ltdhas been exploring some of the key themes shaping the conversations in Frankfurt — from future-ready leadership to inclusive training and safety as an enabler of purpose and performance.

In this final article of our series, we turn our focus to a question that lies at the heart of every transformation journey: How do you measure what you can’t see?

It’s a theme that will be brought to life in the session “Embedding Safety into Business DNA: How to Assess and Strengthen a ‘Non-Measurable’ Safety Culture” with Dirk Schreiber, Associate Director EHS at Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

The session explores a truth we know well: the strength of an organisation’s safety culture often determines whether transformation takes root or if it fades once the spotlight moves on.

The Paradox of Measurement

Culture has this ability to be everywhere, yet to be invisible. You can’t see it directly, but you can feel it in how people speak up (or don’t), how they respond to risk, how they treat each other under pressure, and how they react to EHS adversities.

Many organisations struggle with this paradox: they want to measure culture with the same precision as incident data or compliance metrics. But culture doesn’t live in spreadsheets; it lives in people.

At at Modig Corporate Services Ltd, we believe the goal isn’t to reduce culture to numbers, but to make it visiblethrough clues that show whether change is happening where it matters most: in behaviours, relationships, and mindsets.

Listening as a Measure of Change

In our transformation work, we often say: the real measure of culture is in the how, where and when of what people feel safe to tell you.

That’s why listening, not just surveying, is central to how we assess and strengthen culture.  When people feel socially safe (connected to their peers) and psychologically safe (able to speak openly without fear), you start to see the truth of the organisation emerge: the energy, the hesitation, the unspoken realities that shape performance.

We use structured dialogue, behavioural observation, and feedback loops to surface these indicators, not as judgment, but as insight. Because culture isn’t something to be scored; it’s something to be understood.

Making the Invisible Visible

How do we know when culture has changed? It’s rarely a single moment. It’s when you start hearing different conversations in the corridors. When incident reviews focus not on blame, but on learning. When leaders ask, “What can I do differently?” instead of “Who made the mistake?”

These are the indicators we look for, and the good news is that they can be tracked:

• Behavioural consistency:Are people doing the right things even when no one’s watching?
• Quality of dialogue:Are teams asking questions, challenging safely, and sharing ideas?
• Speed of escalation:Are issues being raised earlier and with more clarity?
• Trust in systems:Do people believe the organisation will act fairly and learn constructively?

These patterns are measurable — not through a single metric, but through a blend of data, dialogue, and observation that paints a truer picture of progress.

Beyond the Programme: Sustaining Change

Transformation isn’t a workshop but rather a way of working.  That’s why our approach at Modig Corporate Services Ltd extends beyond implementation to the embeddingstage to where daily behaviours, leadership habits, and team rituals start to reinforce what was once new.

We know that not every culture programme unfolds perfectly. Some uncover deeper issues that need time, patience, or a different approach. But that’s also progress as we believe that awareness is the beginning of alignment.  When you learn how to listen to your organisation, you also learn how to adapt with it.

Sustainable change doesn’t happen because people are told to behave differently. It happens when they wantto and because they see how safety supports their purpose, their performance, and each other.

Closing the Loop

As we wrap up this five-part series, and start packing our bags for Frankfurt, one message has emerged consistently: Safety, culture, and performance are not separate conversations — they are one.

From aligning safety with strategy, to equipping leaders for connection, to designing inclusive training and enabling culture through purpose — the future of EHS will belong to organisations that see safety not as a department, but as part of their DNA.

And as this summit will no doubt reaffirm, culture isn’t beyond measurement — it just requires us to measure differently.

If you’re attending the summit in Frankfurt, we’d love to meet and continue the conversation.