Safety Culture

An Innovative Leadership Approach

James Roughton, Nathan Crutchfield, Michael Waite

• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780128146644
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Chemical & Biochemical Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Safety Culture, Second Edition, provides safety professionals, corporate safety leaders, members of leadership, and college students an updated book on safety leadership and techniques for the development of a safety culture. The book offers guidance on the development, implementation, and communication of a Safety Management System.

The Second Edition includes a discussion on the perception of safety, analyzing the safety culture, developing a communications network, employee involvement, risk perception, curation, and tools to enhance the Safety Management System.

• Updated materials on the Activity-Based Safety System, Job Hazard Analysis, and Safety Training
• New sections on safety leadership and its application
• A new chapter on Developing a Content Creation Strategy supporting the Safety Management System
• An array of suggested software and social media tools

Part I

Laying the Foundation

Chapter 1

Defining the Perception of Safety

Abstract

An organizational safety culture requires a multidisciplinary approach to improve the potential for ensuring a safe work environment. Leadership can drive the perception of safety through a clear vision of what is to be done and provide focus on common goals to achieve the desired organizational climate for safety. The method entails implementing an array of activities ranging from, for example, selecting a safety management system; measuring human error performance; improving multilevel communication, risk, and loss analysis; and monitoring regulatory compliance. Most importantly, the leadership team and employees must have a positive perception and understanding of what safety entails for a safety culture to be developed and sustained. Safety has its own unique “brand” within the organization. How the brand is perceived by the leadership team and employees is what must be determined. How the safety brand must be challenged becomes an important part of improving the safety culture.

Keywords

Safety culture; Safety management systems; Leadership; Safety professional

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything - for better or for worse.

Simon Sinek

Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.

Wayne W. Dyer

Introduction

An organizational safety culture requires a multidiscipline approach to improve the potential for ensuring a safe work environment. Leadership can drive the perception of safety through a clear vision of what is to be done and provide focus on common goals to achieve the desired organizational climate for safety.

The method entails implementing an array of activities ranging from, for example, selecting a safety management system; measuring human error performance; improving multilevel communication, risk and loss analysis, and monitoring regulatory compliance.

Most importantly, the leadership team and employees must have a positive perception and understanding of what safety entails for a safety culture to be developed and sustained. Safety has its own unique “brand” within the organization. How the brand is perceived by the leadership team and employees is what must be determined. How the safety brand must be challenged becomes an important part of improving the safety culture.

Observation 1

Organizations are not static! There is always some degree of flux and change. To the contrary, a traditional safety process desires stability and to build processes that are permanent and unchanging. The perception of safety is one of being an opponent of change instead of an advocate for improvement and success.

This opposition many times sets up an adversarial relationship between the safety professional and the leadership team.

Implementing an in-depth “culture of safety” is complicated and not well defined. The general perception of “Safety” is that it can be achieved by just following the rules! Even trying to define a mutually agreed upon definition of what safety means remains a problem given the many aspects required for a safe work environment. “There is a feeling that safety rules make people safe, but it is the act of following the rules that reduce the risk of an event…” (Potter, 2018). The overall current perception of safety must be better defined to build a case for the organization’s leadership team for an improved or enhanced safety culture to flourish.

A complex network of multiple business skills, psychological, scientific, and engineering interactions must align with the organization’s internal and external disciplines and resources. Improving the safety culture is further dependent on the safety professional’s sphere of influence within an organization and how well they communicate with the leadership team and network with their peers.

The authors believe a shift is occurring where the safety professional’s function is moving from the position of being primarily a safety information resource to a strategic player in the deploying a safety management system.

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

Ancient Chinese proverb (Maimonides, 2018)

Safety information can be readily found using internet search engines by anyone in the organization. Issues and problems can be quickly published on social media sites as evidenced by employees or customers postings on various media. This has created the need for a rapid, effective, and efficient response to complaints or perceived concerns. A communication network designed to quickly assess and relay severe hazard and risk-related issues rapidly to decision makers is now a critical component of a safety process.

Many organizations continue to use a “No Loss = No Risk” (Mental model, 2018), even though a potential risk remains constant, whereas low injury/illness frequency rates are expected and acknowledged by leadership. Using this concept, a safety process that only uses injury or historical loss data should consider using a risk-based approach as advocated in the safety management systems, ANSI Z10-2012 (Occupational Health & Safety Management Systems, 2012).

Mental models are intellectual structures that enable us to simplify and organize the mirrored inputs we get from the world around us. The shape and support our thinking, decision-making, opinions, values, and beliefs.

Koch (2007)

When this chapter is completed, you should be able to:

• • Develop a personal working definition of “Safety.”
• • Discuss why perception is important for the safety culture.
• • Identify how safety is perceived in the organization and the positive or negative impact on the organization.
• • Identify common perceptions about safety and reasons shaping those perceptions.

Defining Safety

The definition of safety is a core issue impacting the development of a safety culture. The general assumption is that everyone in the organization understands the term “safety,” and how the term is used within the organization. This is not always necessarily accurate.

Multiple definitions or vague concepts about safety reduce the potential for improving the safety culture. Many safety definitions are ambiguous, uncertain, and describe more of an “essence,” something not quite definable and subjected to analysis. Do not send ambiguous messages when it comes to defining the word safety. Safety must be defined in operational terms that everyone can understand the concepts.

A definition of the term “safety” is needed for a safety culture to be developed or sustained. A quick review shows that, after decades, a clear, concise definition of safety ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Authors
• Developing Mission and Intent—Building on the Basics
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Laying the Foundation
• Part II: Safety Management Systems Defined
• Part III: How to Handle the Perception of Risk
• Part IV: Tools to Enhance Your Safety Management System
• Part V: Curation Resources
• Final Words—Parting Thoughts
• Appendix
• Index