Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
How is your culture
What is Culture and its relation to Safety
Considerations when enhancing your organisational culture
The largest influences on safety culture are:
According to our Health and Safety Executive, Culture can be best understood as "the way we do things around here".
Your 'Culture' forms the context within which people judge the appropriateness of their behaviour.
An organisation's culture will influence human behaviour and human performance at work.
Poor safety culture has contributed to many incidents and personal injuries.
The largest influences on safety culture are:
Considerations when enhancing your organisational culture
The largest influences on safety culture are:
- Management commitment
- Employee involvement
- Training and competence
- Communication
- Compliance with procedures
- Organisational learning
Considerations when enhancing your organisational culture
Considerations when enhancing your organisational culture
A culture change process can take several years as its linked to attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and habits associated with the way we have worked for many years
A good starting place is to measure your existing safety.
The HSE's safety climate tool can be used or more informally by simply talking to your management and workforce (proportionate to the hazards and risks in your workplace).
This can help you target development and weak areas within your safety culture.
Andrew Hopkins
All organisations can be said to have a safety culture, which may vary in its effectiveness.
On this view, safety cultures which have a strong focus on safety can be distinguished from those with a weaker focus.
Great safety cultures are defined as positive safety cultures by people who live and work in them, as well as those who visit them and provide an impartial view.
Safety Climate Tool (SCT)
Safety Climate Tool (SCT)
The Safety Climate Tool delivers an objective measure of your safety culture - the 'way things are done' in your organisation when it comes to health and safety.
This is a significant starting point for any organisation to continually improve and raise standards.
Using a simple, online questionnaire, the Safety Climate Tool explores your employees' attitudes and perceptions in key areas of health and safety, while guaranteeing anonymity.
Once the survey has been completed, it generates a comprehensive report and provides guidance that will help improve the organisation's safety culture.
Patrick Hudson
Safety Climate Tool (SCT)
Organisational culture and accidents are inextricably linked, Hudson says, and ultimately, the severity and frequency of accidents reflect an organisation’s culture.
Hudson, who began his career in safety in the wake of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster of 1988, in which 167 men died, defines an organisation’s culture as the common set of values, beliefs, attitudes and working practices that determine people’s behaviours.
Hudson has also mapped out five levels of safety culture, from the worst, to the best. (Hudson’s classification expands on one by sociologist Ron Westrum, who identified pathological, bureaucratic and generative safety cultures.)
Pathological
Reactive
Calculative
Proactive
Generative
‘A common problem in organisations that are struggling on the borderline between the calculative and the proactive/generative levels is success,’ Hudson says.
Coaching & Making Improvements
Behaviour-based safety in industry
Behaviour-based safety in industry
The GROW model in coaching is a widely used, structured framework that guides coachees through four stages:
Goals (what you want to achieve)
Reality (where you are now)
Options (ways to get there)
Will (what you will do).
This was developed by John Whitmore, Graham Alexander, and Alan Fine.
It provides a simple, effective way to move from a problem to clear, actionable steps by ensuring the coachee explores their situation, identifies solutions, and commits to taking action.
This can be adapted to improvements in safety and leadership for individuals and teams.
Behaviour-based safety in industry
Behaviour-based safety in industry
Behaviour-based safety in industry
The standard command and control or enforcement approach to industrial safety has limited effectiveness.
Your employees will take control and ownership of their own safety performance through empowerment, this approach reduces and prevents workplace injuries.
Consequences reinforce behaviours, when we cut a corner or bypass a rule for example to get a job done quickly and our manager 'thanks us' this behaviour is strongly reinforced.
If we stop a job because something is identified as unsafe, and this increases time, cost and the effort of the project team, and our manager still thanks us because it was the right thing to do, this behaviour is reinforced.
Behaviours and leaders reinforce cultures.