Processes that enhances systematic growth of safety culture
The need for systematic culture and enhancement process has been earlier mentioned for an organization to enhance its safety culture. To enhance their safety culture, a systematic, closed-loop process for doing so must be selected.
A typical enhancement process is presented.
Before something can be measured, you must first define and describe what it is that you want to measure.
The next step involves identifying the drivers of safety culture. If you know who or what drives culture, then you are in a better position to know who or what you can elicit to help change or maintain it.
The third step involves measuring the safety culture. Tools and process must be selected that best meet the organisationâs requirements.
What was going to be measured was defined in the first step; next, how, who, and when must be determined.
Once the measurement activities have been completed, the results must be evaluated.
Interpreting the results can be challenging, and the results need to have credibility both internally and externally.
After the evaluation has been completed and interpreted, an action plan needs to be developed to address any identified weaknesses.
The enhancement process then repeats itself in due time in order to check the new level of safety culture reached and to confirm if the actions taken have been effective providing measures over time.
It is important to note that safety culture measures are but one metric that can be used to evaluate the âsafety stateâ of an organisation and in order to obtain a full picture of other safety performance measures should be established.
1. Define the Safety Culture.
The psychological aspects of safety culture refer to âhow people feelâ about safety and safety management systems. This encompasses the individual and group of values, attitudes and perceptions regarding safety, which is often referred to as the safety climate of the organisation.
Behavioural aspects are concerned with what people doâ within the organisation, which includes the safety-related activities, actions and behaviours exhibited by employees.
2. Identify Drivers of a Safety Culture
Cultural drivers focus on two main areas: organisational and those which relate to âkey individualsâ. Organisational drivers may be characterised by management systems and the procedures in a variety of areas of organisational activity. These drivers include both internal and external influences. Examples include:
Corporate business plan, Corporate safety plan, organisational systems, procedures and standards. External examples include regulatory and legal requirements as well as industry standards.
Key groups and individuals within an organisation can influence and drive culture both directly and indirectly through their actions, words and commitment. There can be a strong relationship and influence between a group of behaviours and individual drivers. Groups within an organisation can be professional groups.
Why aviation safety is very important in the safety industry
3. Measuring the Safety Culture.
Many tools have been developed to ensure that measurements of the various aspects of safety culture are taken. Some focus only on operational safety (keeping the public safe from accidents and
Some look at occupational accidents (incidents), others look at occupational Health and Safety (keeping workers safe), while others look at both. This is why it is so important for an organisation to determine how it wants to define safety culture and its key indicators.
These tools and frameworks allow organisations to determine the extent to which the indicators of a strong safety culture exist in an organisation and/or have been instilled in the behaviours of managers and employees.
The selection of the tool or tools that will be used depends upon a number of factors, including what will be measured, resources and schedule. For example, questionnaire can be used to assess the psychological or behavioural aspects. It is important to realise that when using them to assess what people do, they will collect data about what people believe or perceive that they do and not what they actually do.
4. Evaluating the Measures
Interpreting the results produced by the various safety culture measurement tools can be daunting. Each tool can have its own unique challenges.
For surveys, did the respondents understand the question? Why did they answer the way they did? For interviews, were the participants open and honest? If they do not trust the process or those conducting the interviews, the data collected may be incomplete and inaccurate. For audits, are you actually capturing the day-to-day activities or are those being audited on their best behaviour? Or perhaps they spent the week prior to the audit catching up on
things.
By using different measurement tools, you can address weaknesses in one by the strengths in another. For example, you can follow-up a safety culture survey with focus groups in order to explore respondentsâ understanding of key questions and to obtain better and deeper understanding of the findings.
There are many different ways to measure,
Present and in turn present the results of a safety culture assessment. It is important to understand what it is you are measuring and what are the best means for presenting the results.
5. Improving the Safety Culture
The final step of the safety culture enhancement process is âclosing the safety loopâ.
It is important that assessments of safety culture be followed by change where weaknesses have been identified. Employees will disengage from the enhancement process if they see no real benefits from participating.
By using the appropriate tools and accurately evaluating the results, you will be able to.
The achievement of effective safety culture is recognised to be a vital element of achieving and maintaining satisfactory levels of safety performance. A Systematic Safety Culture
The enhancement process is a managerial tool allowing organisations to identify areas where safety culture may be enhanced. It is important to recognise that the
Systematic Safety Culture Enhancement Process is a closed-loop system. Following the implementation of enhancement actions, an organisation must begin again by measuring the safety culture to determine the impact of those actions.
