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Service center executives frequently remark on the importance of sending home their employees at the end of each shift in the same condition they arrived. Those employees increasingly feel the same way.

Plastics manufacturer DuraPlas recently authorized a survey of 1,000 U.S. workers to gauge how much they value a safe environment. The answer, quite a lot.

Nearly half of the respondents, 48 percent, to the survey indicated they would voluntarily take a pay cut to work for an employer with a better safety culture. Men were much more likely to agree with that (56 percent) than women (42 percent).

Additionally, 80 percent of the respondents said a strong safety culture was “important” or “very important.” And 39 percent said they have turned down a job over safety concerns.

“Culture is something communicated through actions as much as it is through words,” said DuraPlas President Paul Phillips. “So if you’re an organization that has a true culture of safety, it’s going to come through in more than posters hung in a breakroom or a days-safe countdown whiteboard on a production floor. It’s going to be communicated through the trainings you offer and the maintenance you do and the equipment you provide your workers.”