Safety Science

In UK industry, particularly in the energy sector, there has been a movement away from ‘lagging’ measures of safety based on retrospective data, such as lost time accidents and incidents, towards ‘leading’ or predictive assessments of the safety climate of the organisation or worksite. A number of different instruments have been developed by industrial psychologists for this purpose, resulting in a proliferation of scales with distinct developmental histories. Reviewing the methods and results from a sample of industrial surveys, the thematic basis of 18 scales used to assess safety climate is examined. This suggests that the most typically assessed dimensions relate to management (72% of studies), the safety system (67%), and risk (67%), in addition themes relating to work pressure and competence appear in a third of the studies.

ABSTRACT The context and habits of accident investigation practices were explored by means of questionnaire data obtained from accident investigators in the healthcare, transportation, nuclear and rescue sectors in Sweden. Issues explored included; resources, training, time spent in different phases of an investigation, methods and procedures, beliefs about causes to accidents, communication issues, etc. Examples of findings were: differences in the extent to which the ‘human factor’ was perceived as a dominant cause to accidents; manning resources to support investigations were perceived as rather scarce; underutilization of data from safety related processes such as risk analysis and auditing data; the phase of suggesting remedial actions (recommendations) were comparatively brief and generally not well supported. A majority of the investigators thought that the investigations were free from pressures to follow a specific direction; the investigators also thought that performing an investigation in itself (regardless of the specific results) had positive influences on safety. A majority of the investigators thought that upper management had a relatively strong influence on safety in the organizations. The results are discussed in terms of suggestions for strategies to strengthen investigation practices – particularly those conducted as part-time work in organizations.

The nature of work has changed dramatically due to globalisation, migration, technological advances and the emergence of the knowledge-based economy. These changes have been accompanied by the increased prevalence of new and emerging types of risk to workers’ health and safety, such as psychosocial risks. This paper reviews the key regulatory and voluntary standards on occupational health and safety of relevance to the management of psychosocial risks in the workplace that are applicable to the European Union member states. The review indicates that regulatory standards set the minimum level of protection for workers and voluntary standards may further enable organisations to go beyond their legal obligations. However, the review also highlights that the terms ‘stress’ and ‘psychosocial risks’ are not mentioned explicitly in most pieces of legislation leading to lack of clarity on the terminology used. While voluntary standards seek to address this, very few provide specific guidance on the process of psychosocial risk management to enable organisations to manage psychosocial risks successfully. On the basis of the review, the case for the development of a voluntary standard for psychosocial risk management is presented. The paper further discusses the recent development of such a standard and its implications at the European level.► Regulatory OSH standards set the minimum level of protection for workers. ► They lack clarity in terminology used on psychosocial risks and their management. ► Few voluntary standards provide guidance on the psychosocial risk management process. ► PAS1010 aims to address these issues and promote prevention of psychosocial risks.s its development are outlined.

This paper introduces a management system suitable for hazardous technology organizations which has been developed based on the assumptions that in these organizations safety is a critical strategic factor, the existence of an enhanced safety culture is a crucial condition for safety and that safety culture enhancement implies in organizational changes. The management system was theoretically developed and then implemented at a Brazilian nuclear research and development installation, as a case study, in order to validate the theoretical propositions assumed in the system development. The developed management system comprises a day-to-day based organizational framework which treats safety as one of the organization strategic perspectives and provides a continuous adaptation of the complex causal inter-relationships which occur between the implementation of new management practices – designed and implemented according to the requirements of the criteria of excellence of the Brazilian quality award management assessment model – and the organization safety culture. The results achieved in the case study permitted to demonstrate the validness of all the system theoretical propositions and to conclude that the continuous and systematic operation of the management system makes an effective safety culture enhancement possible and simultaneously facilitates that the new management practices be effectively implemented, thus making continuous organizational improvement possible.

ABSTRACT The study proposed an outcome-and-behavior-based safety incentive program (OBBSIP). The study addressed the limitation of outcome-based program, i.e. accidents underreporting and behavior-based safety program, i.e. not having direct link to safety performance. The OBBSIP has two principles, i.e. an outcome-based approach through tiered incentives and a behavior-based approach through regular peer monitoring and feedbacks on compliance with safety precautions and safe behaviors (SPSB). Its effectiveness is validated through a case study i.e. a field experiment in dairy fluid plants. An AB (baseline-treatment) method was used to compare an experimental plant with a control plant. Results show that the program reduced the number of accident by 75% (measured by claims). The program created a positive work environment through (1) social influence where there was peer pressure to comply with the SPSB to help reduce accidents; (2) outcome feedback from the Bingo board updates, and positive and negative feedbacks on compliance/non-compliance with the SPSB; and (3) social recognition e.g. team members’ praises and small incentive awards. Prior literature provided explanation for the program’s effectiveness, i.e. the combination of social influence, feedback and tiered incentive awards with achievable goals. The program is low cost, easy to understand and effective in reducing accidents.

A framework for the development of organisational safety culture based on Westrum's [Westrum, R., 1996. Human factors experts beginning to focus on organizational factors in safety. ICAO Journal October] typology of organisational communication had been ...

It is clear that probabilistic risk assessment or probabilistic safety assessment is embedded in the safety culture of the nuclear power industry, worldwide. Risk assessment applications are in transition in the sense that the regulatory apparatus is not yet in place, at least in the United States of America (USA), to fully support a risk-based licensing process. There is progress on the regulatory front, but it is tedious and not without its frustrations. Currently, the strategy in the USA is a “risk-informed” approach that tends to be “business as usual”, but while you're at it, “do a risk assessment”. The result is added burden (and costs) at a time of increased competition in the power field as a result of deregulation. There is hope in that some steps are finally being taken to modify the regulations to allow risk assessment to be more of a part of the licensing process. For example, the regulations having to do with maintenance, plant changes, and technical specifications have been modified to allow insights from risk assessment to be part of the basis for licensing amendments. On the matter of standards there is strong support that is scientifically based and addresses such issues as health effects and environmental impacts. There appears to be less support for standards on such matters as definition of terms, methodology, and data requirements.

In recent years there has been widespread acknowledgement of the significance of managerial and organisational failures in the causation of accidents. The activities and processes involved in managing safety have come under increasing scrutiny via the development of ...