The Keys to Unlocking Safety Culture

Editor's Notes

1. Welcome to this installment of the Medgate Webinar series and thank you for joining us. Today’s webinar will be discussing the mystery of Safety Culture and its elements. Information provided in this webinar is ideas and suggestions on how safety culture can apply within your organization.
2. Thanks Mike--Good morning first of all I would like to introduce myself My name is Shannon Crinklaw. I am a CRSP & CHRP. I am a Medgate CSC who implements Safety & Industrial Hygiene implementations. I have implemented projects for all sizes of organizations including: Boehringer Ingelheim, Southern Star and L.L Bean. I have over 10 years’ experience in manufacturing including developing and implementing Health & Safety Systems and Programs. I am also trained and/or trainer for some ISO programs, Toyota Safety Way and Problem Solving. I have been involved in developing specific risk assessment programs for over 6000 employee base. Before I jump into my presentation, I’m going to push out a poll and ask a provocative poll for the start of a webinar on safety culture. We want to find out whether this audience thinks safety culture is useful or whether it’s just a fad which isn’t helpful to your overall safety programs. We’ll discuss the results of the poll at the end of the presentation.
3. This webinar will consist of 4 parts. Part 1 will ask what is safety culture and look at some definitions we can use Part 2 will ask whether the concept is important and deal with some of the criticism surrounding safety culture Part 3 will break down safety culture into component parts and for each one suggest some tools you can use in your SMS And in Part 4 we will show how you can take these components and turn them into indicators which can be tracked in Medgate I’m Mike Jackson and I’m your moderator today.
4. So, let’s get started. Today my presentation is going to take a look at the concept of safety culture and try to break the concept down into component parts which will be potentially more useful that the overall term. We are going to start with looking at what safety culture is and why it’s important
5. Safety culture takes some flak because it is not as easy to define as other safety initiatives we come across in our day-to-day roles. So, I thought a good place to start would be to look at some definitions and where safety culture comes from. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 highlighted the importance of safety culture and the impact of human factors on the outcome of safety performance. The term ‘safety culture’ was first used a couple of years later in INSAG’s (1988) ‘Summary Report on the Post-Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident’ where safety culture was described as: "That assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals which establishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance." So safety culture was negatively defined originally. It was a lack of safety culture which led to the missed checks and human error which led to the meltdown. What we as safety professionals are trying to do when we are talking about safety culture is to foster and formalize the thinking and responsibilities of every employee around safety and what it means to them. INSAG = International Nuclear Safety Group
6. Over time the concept has changed slightly and different organizations define it with slightly different emphasis. Here, for example is the UK Health & Safety Commissions definition: Review slide What stands out here is that culture must be felt on both the individual and group level. The system is only as strong as its weakest link, so steps must be take to ensure the commitment and engagement of all employees.
7. OSHA has a more comprehensive take on the matter, which includes rather more of the concepts which taken together can be said to define an organization’s safety culture – review slide This definition may be more thorough in the building blocks of safety culture, but what it misses from the UK Health & Safety Commission definition is that dual collective and individual aspect. Safety Culture is often used interchangeably with safety climate but Ultimately an organization’s safety culture is ultimately reflected in the way in which safety is perceived and acted by your population.
8. Taking OSHA’s components from the previous slide, one thing that stands out is that these elements are created by the company employees themselves and for that reason are often company specific. Each company’s safety culture, though relying on common concepts, will have its own individual touchpoints. This is also one of the problems with safety culture. Since it has to be organization specific to succeed, there is no out of the box solution. Each organization functions differently and the safety culture must work with the existing structures and cultural norms rather than being superimposed on top of them. It is not just a policy, program or procedure. It’s a way of thinking and acting. There is no cookie cutter way to implement safety and it will take strategic thinking to fit this concept into your own environment.
9. Perhaps because there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and because the term relies on so many intangibles, safety culture often comes under attack. It is seen as something that comes down from management which suddenly decides that ‘we need a safety culture!’ - usually due to an event that has occurred. If management is impatient, it may not realize that a safety culture cannot be created overnight out of thin air. It needs a deep commitment from all levels of the organization to create a strong and lasting safety culture. Otherwise, more likely than not, you will see a string of faddy initiatives which do not grasp anyone’s imagination and actually may damage the reputation of safety within your organization as efforts are made to change very quickly without involvement being sought and without the changes being properly explained to all stakeholders. Safety culture is not new. Stop trying to create it on the spot or with a quick program.
10. Culture is not a program – it can be seen as the logic driving your programs or the interconnectedness between them. It relies of soft concepts such as accountability, leadership, commitment and adaptability which cannot easily be measured to see whether your culture is succeeding or not. You may often see safety culture being pushed as a program of the month or backfiring bonus plan incentive or implemented as a new idea. This doesn’t work. Point #2 - This is the biggest criticism and allows for this concept to be given up easily on. If you can’t see it, then you don’t think its there. This can be frustrating for safety professionals who are used to having metrics and data that explains why efforts work, don’t work, succeed and fail.
11. Having signed up to a webinar that promised the keys to unlocking safety culture, you may be slightly concerned that so far I have not been forthcoming in my praise for the topic. But all that ends here. Everything that has gone so far has dealt with what happens when you approach safety culture in the wrong way. It is not a short-term fix or something you can easily implement and measure, but when it’s done right it does matter, because unlike the poor employee in Chernobyl, when your company has a culture of safety, it means you employees will go beyond the call of duty for safety, which means your employees are safer, and costs are reduced from injuries and other expenses. Point #1 – if a safety culture exists, people act and go beyond the call of duty to be safe. Point #2 – there is more empowerment and incentive to identify hazards and consequently fix the hazards Point #3 – employees who know safety truly is a priority feel encouraged to participate and to act to keep the greater population safe Point #4 – ultimately, there is also cost savings.
12. And if you still need some convincing, here is a quote from OSHA which should make you sit up and take notice – Review slide. Basically people’s beliefs, attitudes and management supporting them will make a difference.
13. One of the first things to do when facing a large, unwieldy task is to break it down into more manageable component parts – and safety culture is no different. Here are the six main concepts which contribute to a culture of safety: Commitment, Behavior, Awareness, Adaptability, Information and Consistency. I’ll now take each of them in turn – define what it means in this context and give you some tools to aid you in harnessing them in your company.
14. So let’s begin with commitment. This is about making safety a priority truly and not just using it as a tagline. Having commitment to safety means more than having senior management send out communications promoting new initiatives. There must be buy in at all levels as well as leadership commitment for a safety culture to take root. This means leadership, supervisors and employees. Supervisors are especially important here because that have responsibility for day-to-day implementation of your SMS Training Inspections & observing work practices Paperwork Consider making certain employees champions of safety culture to help you promote any messages to a wider audience. Like train-the-trainer, explaining your thinking once in detail to a small group means that it can be spread many times to other groups.
15. Point #1: The key to commitment is to involve your stakeholders in decision-making around safety. If you are implementing any changes or new processes make sure you ask for input from the employees who will be effected by them. These are the people who will ultimately define whether it is a success or failure. Point #2 – make safety a priority at all levels by integrating safety into company goals and missions and including a specific Safety objective in the annualy plan for all areas of the organization. If its in the plan and people are being held to the plans this can demonstrate that safety is a priority. Point #3 - When consulting, don’t simply explain the changes and expect people to see the rationale. You have to communicate the specific benefits that people will enjoy from the change so that it isn’t seen as more red tape and a waste of time. Point #4 - One way to track this over time is to establish safety committees who can provide a sounding board for embryonic ideas and can monitor how their division or team is interacting with new processes and whether engagement levels remain high as new ideas bed in. Point #5 - One key to success is to have an Executive Leader as the Safety Champion. This person should be relied on for support and back-up on safety initiatives and activities. They don’t have to be involved in all programs, but are the voice for the little guy when they run into issues or safety takes a back seat. Point #6 – and one of the most important things you can do is actually give people time to do Safety in their job. If you are expecting employees to do safety outside their regular job and put in extra hours or if you treat safety as a nuisance, the rest of the organizations is going to feel it. Actually giving people time and expecting them to use some time to complete safety initiatives is crucial to demonstrating commitment. I’ve seen everything from starting each and every meeting with a safety initiative to challenging every department with annual objectives to implement safety related preventative actions. All these small activities add up to showing safety does matter at all levels in the organization and these activities keep safety at the forefront of the minds.
16. Safety behavior is a part of everyday work at all levels – this is how safety culture is expressed in actions. Because behavior is made up of actions, this is often on part of culture that is a focus for measuring success. What we mean by behavior is empowering employees to act in a positive way. There are many ways to accomplish this.
17. As I mentioned earlier, a system relies on there being no weak links. In terms of safety behavior, this means that everyone has to commit to the same standards. Point #1 – one way to encourage good safety behavior is to build safety into everyday activities such as including Safety key points into operating procedures or have safety checks within every day work. Don’t incentivize zero incidents as it will discourage reporting. Point #2 - To enforce this, consider empowering employees to make (anonymous) reports about unsafe behavior. What is crucial is that rules apply across the board. There is no use in having a big drive for PPE when management is seen without goggles or similar. Behavior relies on consistency to become habit. Reward employees when they do take initiative in safety whether it be implementing corrective actions on their own or request safety training. Empowerment doesn’t mean putting everything back to employee to overwhelm them and have them begin to see Safety as additional work, it means supporting employees from the management level to get things done when the initiative does happen and this will encourage the repeat of the behavior. You need to be the employee’s safety champion. Point #3 – To encourage behavior, the attitude needs to be to fix problems, not place blame. If employees know that the focus is to fix the problem, they are less nervous to be blamed for an occurrence and more likely to participate. Point #4 – Remove the fear of discipline. If employees are constantly fearing that they are going to be reprimanded when they get involved, you will never have the initiative and this perception and attitude not only stunts safety culture, but continuous improvement all together. Point #5 - When looking at which behaviors to track, always prefer proactive indicators – ones which show that the system is in good order, rather than the outputs. So rather than number of incidents, consider things like number of spot checks, number of innovative safety ideas, number of behavioral vs non-behavioral incidents. These will give you a better view as to whether behavior is changing or not.
18. You can’t expect employees to be aware of safety initiatives if you aren’t communicating properly to them. On this slide I have run through some of the things you might want to inform your colleagues of throughout the year: so, safety programs, what they are, how they will work, what is the value, how they will be expected to contribute How your team will be monitoring them and how they can self-monitor How to improve and if you are using incentives, how to reach them What improvements have been achieved and how each division or office has contributed Which leads on to statistics – if you aren’t regularly publishing some safety statistics, you should be because it makes employees feel like safety is something they are involved in rather than something that happens to them and I will talk more about this in a few slides’ time.
19. Communication is obviously all well and good, but like the man with the loudspeaker in the previous slide, it is easy for communication to become one way and top down. For you to create a more inclusive and interactive communications strategy to increase awareness of your initiatives, consider conducting surveys of how specific campaigns are received. You can also create a training program to increase involvement. Perhaps a little further down the road, when your safety culture is more established, you could consider extending it to your supply chain and contractors in the same way you might with your sustainability culture or ethics culture. This gives the message that your culture is something to be proud of and is an example for others to follow. But one of the key awareness activities is making Safety Visible. This should be done in more than 1 form. I have seen Safety sections on communications boards, including safety as agenda items for regular meetings, ensuring company newletters, Christmas parties and company messages all have an element of safety. Make safety “news” quote on quote important.
20. A good safety culture involves employees reporting hazards where they see them and then for these to be acted upon so that the process can be improved. If you have introduced any of the ISO standards into your organization, you will be familiar with the idea of continuous improvement. Your SMS needs to be adaptable to incorporate change. If you are encouraging change and don’t have systems ready in place to allow for the change to happen, the momentum may be stunted and again…its sending the message that safety is in fact not important. Be ready. Review slide
21. One key attitude change that greatly affects Safety culture is the habit of trying to hide problems. I am referring to the dreaded Safety Audit. In most organizations, when preparing for the Safety Audit, the attitude is to avoid showing problems or hiding problems. Although external auditors may not want you to see shooting off fireworks when they find a problem or deficiency, but internally, you can form an attitude that these are learning points and will aid in continuous improvement as long as they are fixed. A good tool to use is to have a pre-audit before the external audit in which you challenge employees to find deficiencies so they can be fixed before the external audit occurs. This shows being proactive and the end result will be better audit results and more team member involvement. With that being said, when you find these problems, you have to have the ability and will to fix problems. This does not mean fixing all problems right away and some problems may require a much longer countermeasure, but demonstrating you have a system and a plan to fix each item and following through should instill confidence in your safety systems and promote continuous improvement.You should also consider how your safety culture may need to be adaptable to fit into different cultures and work environments. If you are in a global company, a communications strategy that works well in one country may be unpopular in another. In all cases, follow the cycle of plan, do, act, change.
22. Review slide Just like hazards symbols we are all so familiar with, safety stats are more effective when they are clearly visible. Of course, there will always be concerns of potential negativity around failure in reaching set targets, but remember the definitions of safety culture we ran through at the beginning of the session. This has to be a collective and individual effort and it’s impossible for that to develop is people aren’t aware of how they’re doing. Transparency is key in displaying information and if you are falling behind on targets, consider it a problem that needs to be fixed. A chance for improvement. Encourage employees to get involved to be looking for safety information and contribute to it.
23. The key to the information component is increasing the collective responsibility for safety. It is not something that the safety team alone has to deal with but each and every employees. If people are made to feel included, they are much more likely to give their input, so there is a positive reinforcement through providing information on how the safety programs are going. Displaying information, whether this is on boards or dashboards or report cards, allows your stats to come under greater scrutiny and you can be sure that an engaged team will spot worrying trends immediately and want to act upon them. When you are deciding which stats to display, consider what your objectives are an choose ones that reflect them. There are so many stats that can be available and overwhelming so consider which will be your key indicators and communicate these as company objectives for everyone.
24. Consistency is one of the most important principles to build safety culture. Consistency solidifies the message. In order to make safety a priority, you must be persistent and many of the messages you use will play over and over and over again until they are well known within your organization. Ensure that safety continues to be part of all activities. Challenge how routine activites, meetings, etc. can include safety. The most important part is to ensure safety is not just a priority or focus when a big event happens such as an accident or audit, but safety is getting just as much recognition and air time during everyday activity.
25. Consistency ingrains the importance of safety into the organization and eliminates the attitudes or beliefs that safety is the flavor of the month and does not really matter.
26. An important aspect of understanding your safety culture is measuring aspects within your organization. This can help you see where you are at and help monitor (and prove) any improvements.
27. Review slide: as we saw when looking at adaptability earlier, the whole of your safety culture must be subjected to continuous improvement for it to succeed. Culture is not a static object – it must be living and evolving for it to win over employees. So how do we begin to break down safety culture. There is not one master metric. There are several elements that contribute to seeing safety importance in your organization.
28. There are obvious indicators which are industry known and include the various incident tracking.
29. But there are other indicators which focus more around attitude, engagement and initiative that can also be looked at. Point #1 – read slide Point #2 – shows how engaged employees are Point #3 – how quickly are investigations being completed shows how important levels within the organization think about safety? This can be investigated subjectively if you look at the quality of investigations and probe into why investigations are being completed slowly if that is the case. Point #4 – this can be measures by comparing results over time. A key feature here would be to make the survey anonymous in order to try and promote truthful submissions and obtain better information.
30. Point #1 – remember to celebrate findings but monitoring the # of audits items found – maybe the pre-audit you want to see findings go up, but in external audit, you want to see # of findings go down Point #2 – What % of inspections are overdue shows the importance and priority being put on safety activities Point #3 – how many people are attending non-mandatory safety courses? What is the % of people overdue for annual safety training? Point #4 – Setting targets and understanding the industry gives you another way to measure how you are doing outside your organization. Point #5 – look at the # of employees involved in safety activities vs. your entire population and specifically within your committees. Are people attending the committee? What is the # of items raised at the committees? These are all indicators of attitudes and priority put on safety. Although there could be various reasons and some good reasons, why these activities aren’t being done, its an indicator or measure to compare over time and to help identify trends which would be reflected with attitudes and safety culture.
31. Let’s look at safety culture in Medgate.
32. Now that you’ve seen the many aspects and elements of safety culture, you will see the value in trying to gather and focus all these elements into one organized method. Safety Software can help organize the information and generate reports to keep your safety champions and management up to speed. It can help make safety stats visible and equips you with information to identify trends and share with your organization.
33. So just to recap:
34. In conclusion, we have reviewed various aspects of safety culture with a focus on measuring components. We have reviewed the 6 major components including commitment, behavior, awareness, adaptability, communicating information and consistency. With this being said, safety culture is still not an easy concept and there is no cookie cutter way to implement. I encourage all organizations to take a look at their current management systems and measures as a starting point and look at other initiatives implemented in your organization. What is a core value your organization has and how did it become that? For example, if quality is a core value, what activities, elements, etc. were implemented to make it a core value and can I transfer any of these initiatives to making safety a core element. Develop the tools you will need to gather information and allow for change and Be creative. Even with small efforts, you will slowly start to see results if you remain persistent and consistent. Thank you for your time.