The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) announced collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to adapt the existing Safety Climate Tool to the maritime industry in order to help assess the attitudes of individuals within an organization towards health and safety issues, and boost safety culture.
The move comes as part of the UK Flag’s drive towards improved safety awareness, and as MCA data reveal that poor safety culture is the root cause of many incidents within the workplace, while the remote nature of a lot of seafarer roles means an incident is often serious.
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As such, the tool has been designed by scientists at the HSE, with advice from experts at the MCA and shipping companies, to measure the perceptions of the workforce on health and safety issues. It will offer insight into the safety culture of the organization to provide ways to continually improve and raise standards, with hopes it will lead to a reduction in the number of incidents.
Using a simple, online questionnaire, the tool will explore employees’ attitudes and perceptions in key areas of health and safety. These data will lead to a comprehensive report as well as guidance to help improve the organization’s safety culture.
The MCA stands at the forefront of maritime safety and wants to encourage companies to invest in the idea of improving safety culture across the industry. The agency is supporting this tool as a great way to highlight the problems that could lead to potentially avoidable accidents and avoidable deaths,
…said Julie Carlton, Head of Seafarer Safety and Health with UK Maritime Services.
