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Safety culture is a sub-facet of
organisational culture, which is thought to affect
members' attitudes and behaviour in relation to an
organisation’s ongoing health and safety performance.
Hence, safety culture is
a concept intrinsically linked to organisational culture
and safety performance. Numerous studies have linked
safety culture to a number of safety-related outcomes,
including: performance of safe work practices; safety
program activities and effectiveness; and interpretations of
accidents and other safety incidents.
The terms
safety culture and safety climate
may both be used to describe the ways in which members
of organisations make sense of the overall safety of
their work environment. Safety culture, however, exists
at a higher level, relating in part to overarching
policies and goals. Whereas, safety climate, on the
other hand, is often used to describe the more
“tangible” outputs of an organisation’s safety culture.
For example, how people perceive and describe the
importance given to safety issues by the organisation at
a particular point in time, and how local arrangements
are seen to reflect this. In this way, safety climate is
regarded as a manifestation of safety culture in the
behaviour and expressed attitudes of employees.
Achieving a "positive" or "total" safety culture requires the
organisation identify the barriers preventing employees
and leaders from performing their best. Otherwise,
tremendous effort may be lost pursuing initiatives that
miss the mark. Dutcher SMS
offers a comprehensive safety climate assessment that
measures employees’ perceptions about the overall
effectiveness of the organisation’s safety culture.
Results of the assessment serve a number of functions.
They act as a diagnostic tool to target areas warranting
attention, and identify barriers to the improvement
efforts. The results can also be used as a performance
measure to assess the success of ongoing safety
improvement efforts. Finally, the assessment
provides an avenue for employee input into safety
improvement efforts.
How can Dutcher SMS
help?
Dutcher SMS uses
a safety
culture assessment methodology based on a systems approach to organisational
culture. This approach combines a number of qualitative
and quantitative assessment
methods (i.e., questionnaires, focus groups, behavioural
observations,
examination of written records and databases, and
document analysis) to describe and
explore the efficacy of health and safety management
systems via the following dimensions:
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Management Commitment
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Communication
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Priority of Safety
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Safety Rules
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Work Environment
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Management Style
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Managing Change
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Systems Compliance
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Involvement Supportive
Environment
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Co-operation
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Accidents and Incidents
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Appreciation of Risk
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Personal Priorities
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Shared Values
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Competence
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Safe Behaviours
The evidence produced by these
methods are complementary rather than alternatives and
provide different views of organisational health and
safety culture by tapping many aspects of the
organisation’s structure, function and behaviour
to understand what drives your organisation's safety
culture (i.e., organisational drivers and controls, and
drivers at the individual level). Dutcher SMS also provides guidance on
interpretation of results and their application
to formulate action plans and
possible improvement strategies, including:
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Safety
Management Systems' Maturity Path
Organisations rely on a number of processes and
procedures to manage risk and thereby decrease
incidents and injuries. These generally include
systems such as safety rules and procedures, safety
training, hazard identification and correction,
discipline, incident reporting and analysis, safety
communications, safety suggestions, and rewards and
recognition. Each safety management system has an
important contribution to make in terms of not only
improving workplace safety, but also positively
impacting an organisation’s safety culture. At best,
when the system is poorly designed or operating
ineffectively, its ability to affect beneficial
change is compromised. At worst, a poorly designed,
badly implemented, or ill-functioning system can
actually have a destructive influence on an
organisation’s overall safety culture.
Dutcher SMS
can use results from the Safety Climate Assessment to
assess the systems’ ongoing influence your
organisation’s safety culture. Working with a representative team from the
organisation,
Dutcher SMS
facilitates a structured exercise to assess
perceptions about numerous aspects of the safety
management systems (all of which are briefly
assessed in the questionnaire) that most influence
employees’ engagement in the safety culture.
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