HSE Solutions present Mrs Jen Webster, a child psychologist at the Health and Safety Laboratory, who provides a clear explanation of what is the safety culture, and help organisations understand and improve their safety culture using their ascent model. Thus, she explains what is the safety culture, why it is important and how you can measure it.
- What is safety culture
In 1993 HSE Solutions Advisory Committee explained that safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to and the style and proficiency of an organization’s health and safety management.
- Safety culture within an organisation
Along safety culture there’s also the term safety climate. What’s the difference between safety culture and safety climate?
Mrs Webster uses the metaphor of the iceberg, of what you see and what you don’t see. Safety climate is the perception held across the workforce at a given minute moment in a time; It’s measurable.
Safety culture, on the other hand, is the underlying shared values beliefs and habitual working practices that influence health and safety performance, which are not always obvious.
Generally, organizations with a successful health and safety record use an appropriate mix of both leading and lagging indicators.
In order for an organisation to have a successful and healthy safety culture, Mrs Webster recommends the steps below:
- Build your foundation for what you want to achieve and get the support of key stakeholders in your organization;
- Analyze your current safety culture by using HSL safety climate tool to give you a baseline that will act as your anchor moving forward;
- Focus on your results use the survey data to engage and involve the workforce in decisions about what needs to change;
- Form an action plan;
- Evaluate how you’re.
