How Safety Culture can be Operationalised for the Workforce

As CEO of Compono, I’m a firm believer that it’s simply not enough for me and my team to focus only on building intelligent software. It is also important that we contribute to the existing body of academic work within the field of Organisational Psychology.

Being at the forefront of empirical research and working with reputable institutions allows us to stay ahead of the competition and ultimately ensure that we continue to build cutting-edge technology that leaves direct, positive impacts on the world of work.

For me, it’s always been important to build viable solutions that help to drive real change in people’s work lives.

In a recent project I did with two prominent Australian Universities, we set out to develop a safety culture maturity framework specifically designed for application within companies that operate in safety-critical industries like mining, construction, manufacturing, and logistics.

Safety and operational risk management have always been a passion of mine, as the effects of getting it wrong in these types of industries often spell disaster for individuals, companies, and the greater community; think of the Event Horizon and BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the Chernobyl nuclear disaster or pretty much every episode of Air crash Investigations.

However, getting it right also has massive payoffs –

research shows that organisations that effectively manage their safety make the most profit over time (Hudson, 1999).

Organisations operating in high-risk industries have an obligation to ensure, in so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of all workers and the community in which it operates. An organisation’s safety culture is seen as a key mechanism towards managing safety outcomes. In one of my previous articles, I described organisational culture as, “who and what we are, what we find important, and how we go about doing things around here” (Hudson, 1999).

Safety culture is a special type of organisational culture, one in which safety is understood to be, and is accepted as, the top priority.

It refers to the ways in which safety is managed in relation to all other business priorities. And when measured effectively, it can act as a lead indicator that provides vital insight into the state of safety within an organisation. This is seen as distinct from lagging indicators like accidents, as it offers knowledge about safety without the need for retrospective analysis of negative outcomes.

Research on safety culture has mostly focused on defining the characteristics of a positive culture, including describing what a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ safety culture looks like and how to spot the difference between the two.

While useful in outlining the construct, the research is descriptive in nature and does not operationalise it or provide a framework for empirically measuring safety culture. Consequently, there is a lack of empirical data on what constitutes a ‘good’ safety culture and how it relates to improved organisational safety related outcomes (Cox & Cox 1996).

While safety culture is considered a means for ensuring high levels of safety performance, there is a limited understanding in terms of how safety cultures can develop and evolve over time and how different levels of culture maturity are associated with safety performance outcomes and behaviour expectations (Westrum, 1997; Reason, 1997; Hudson, 2001; Lawrie et al., 2006).

The current research project set out to design and validate a framework for the development and maturation of organisational safety culture within the Maritime industry.

The aim of this research was to move the agenda away from the rhetoric about the importance of safety culture, and more towards understanding how the concept can be operationalised to create safer and more productive work environments, ultimately aiding organisations in their quest to better understand the link between safety culture and safety performance and helping them promote workplace discussions about safety goals and aspirations.

This will help bridge the gap between the policy makers who espouse the importance of safety culture and the practitioners charged with implementing such a culture, yet find it a problematic concept to understand, engage with, and improve.

So what did we do?

We performed a thorough literature review and identified nine dimensions that formed the basis of our safety culture framework.

The first six dimensions describe the systems and processes used for managing safety. The last three dimensions deal with the human elements responsible for motivating safe behaviour.

We used 5 levels or stages of maturity, ranging from pathological to generative, to evaluate maturity across the dimensions.

Organisations operating at the Pathological stage consider safety as a problem caused by workers. Here, the main drivers are the business and a desire not to get caught by regulators. A company that has a pathological set of values does not care about meeting its legal obligations for health and safety.

At the Generative stage of safety culture maturity, there is active safety participation at all levels of the organisation. Safety is considered an inherent part of the business and organisations operating at this stage are characterised by chronic unease as a counter to complacency.

A company that has a generative set of values genuinely cares for workers’ health and safety. In addition to safety culture maturity, we evaluated a range of preconditions and safety outcome measures.

The research sample consisted of employees from 195 different companies across 52 nationalities in the Maritime industry.

Key Findings

Looking at the research model in Figure 1, we found the following:

1. Employees in companies with more mature safety cultures reportedly trust their direct supervisors and colleagues more.
2. Employees in companies with more mature safety cultures reportedly receive greater support from their supervisors and colleagues.
3. Employees in companies with more mature safety cultures reportedly have better mental health.
4. Employees in companies with more mature safety cultures are reportedly more likely to engage in safety citizenship behaviour.
5. Higher levels of safety citizenship behaviours are also related to higher levels of reported trust, support, and employee mental health levels.
6. Employees in companies with more mature safety cultures report experiencing less job pressure and fewer resource constraints. These employees also reported to experience less fatigue and loss of situational awareness on the job.
7. Employees that reportedly exhibit higher levels of safety compliance behaviour also reported lower levels of fatigue, loss of situation awareness, job pressure, and resource constraints.

What does this mean?

This research is one of the first of its kind to test a safety culture maturity model and outline how safety culture is linked to organisational influences, safety preconditions, and specific safety outcomes.

The model shows how safety culture maturity can be measured and communicates the benefit to companies that have a mature safety culture.

This research project is important for Compono, as we aim to include this safety culture maturity model as part of our suite of assessments for companies operating in safety critical industries. In addition to helping these companies evaluate their own culture maturity, we will also provide them with a way to evaluate the maturity level of their safety culture, relative to other companies in the same industries.

Does your company operate in a safety critical industry?

Compono can help you evaluate your culture and manage your people risks.

Get in touch to find out more.

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