II.6- Indicators that are known to influence safety
culture
The five indicators are as follows: Leadership, Two-way
communication, Employee involvement, Learning culture and Attitude towards
blame. In the following paragraph, we shall see how these
indicators influences positively or negatively safety culture in
organisations.
II.6.1- Leadership
The literature has highlighted key criteria of successful
leadership, which are likely to promote a positive safety culture. These
criteria are: Performance versus Safety Priority, High Visibility of
Management's Commitment to Safety and Safety Management Systems.
From Performance versus Safety Priority,
senior management should give safety a high status within the
organisation's business objectives and safety should be prioritized in all
situations by providing:
ï Health and safety budget, Opportunities for safety
communication, Health and safety training, Support to personnel and Manpower
(including health and safety specialists).
Leadership can be measured by looking at how visible
management is to the workforce. Not only is visibility important, but so also
is the extent to which management provide the opportunity for two-way
communication.
Examples of a positive and negative evidence point for the
indicator «Leadership» includes:
· Positive- There should be clear
evidence that action lists or action plans are developed, signed and tracked by
management.
· Negative- Safety issues identified by
management are not dealt with but are just «filed». No action is
taken which could help to learn a lesson.
Concerning High Visibility of Management's Commitment
to Safety, Senior managers should visibly and repeatedly demonstrate
their commitment to safety throughout all areas of the organisation. This will
create a shared vision of the importance of safety. This can be achieved by the
use of verbal communication (e.g. scheduled safety tours and meetings) and
written safety communication (e.g. statements, newsletters). See paragraph
below for distribution.
Meanwhile for the Safety Management Systems,
organisations should have effective systems put in place for the management and
co-ordination of safety. This should be led by a strategic safety management
team.
II.6.2- Two-Way Communication: (notice board on safety
issues, intra-net/outlook, internet, telephone and verbal)
A positive safety culture requires effective channels for
top-down, bottom-up and horizontal communication on safety matters. The main
learning points from this review are listed below:
ü Top-down Communication: Effective
communication from management to staff is the key to providing successful
health and safety leadership. This can be achieved through a visible safety
policy statement, and newsletters describing safety news, safety issues, and
major accident risks.
ü Safety Reporting: Communicating a
problem or concern is only one step on the route towards a good safety culture.
Feedback mechanisms should be put in place to respond to the reporter (if
required) concerning any actions taken.
ü Horizontal Communication: The
organisation should provide a system for the effective transfer of information
between individuals, departments and teams. In practice, appropriate safety
information should be available when required.
II.6.3- Involvement of employee (Staff):
The literature has identified best practice approaches in
relation to the involvement and participation of staff or employee. The
consensus is that, active employee participation is a positive step towards
preventing and controlling hazards. The main points identified have been
summarised below:
· Ownership for safety can be increased by providing
effective training, and providing opportunities for employees to be responsible
personally for areas of safety.
· Safety specialists should play an advisory or
consultancy role.
· It should be easy for staff at all levels to report
concerns about decisions that are likely to affect them, particularly during an
organizational change.
· Feedback mechanisms should be put in place to inform
staff about any decisions that are likely to affect them be it direct or
indirect.
II.6.4- Learning Culture
It is widely recognized that a learning culture is vital to
the success of the safety culture within an organisation. The main findings
from the research revealed that:
· The existence of a learning culture enables
Organisations to identify, learn and change unsafe conditions. A system should
be put place that will allow all employees to proactively contribute ideas for
improvement.
· In-depth analysis of incidents, and good communications
with provisions for feedback and sharing of information enable a learning
culture to develop.
· All levels of the workforce should be included in
safety climate surveys. This helps to increase employees' involvement in the
company and it provides the opportunity for issues or concern to be raised.
Feedback regarding the outcomes of the survey, and any actions taken should be
disseminated throughout the company.
Learning culture can be measured by the extent to which safety
culture surveys are conducted. Thus, a positive evidence point for a successful
safety culture review is the involvement of all employees within the survey.
II.6.5- Attitude towards blame.
Companies or Organisations with a blame culture have been
described by Whittingham (2004) as those which: `over-emphasise individual
blame for the human error, at the expense of correcting defective systems'.
Blame allocates fault and responsibility to the individual making the error,
rather than to the system, organisation or management process. Below are
summarised the main findings.
ü Organisations should move from a blame culture to a
just culture or one of accountability.
ü Those investigating incidents/accidents should have a
good understanding of the mechanism of human error and a system should be put
in place that enables the degree of culpability to be well assessed.
ü Management should demonstrate care and concern towards
employees.
ü Employees should feel that they are able to report
issues or concerns without fear that they will be blamed or disciplined
personally.
ü Confidentiality should be maintained throughout the
course of the investigation.
| 
