Why Safety Culture? Historical & Conceptual Issues

1. Why Safety Culture?Historical & Conceptual Issues Kathryn Mearns

2. ‘It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism’. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (1994)

3. Safety Culture • History • What is it? • Why are organizations focused on it? • Can we measure it? • Can we manage it?

4. Chernobyl “…that assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals which established that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance” (IAEA, 1986)

5. Piper Alpha ‘It is essential to create a corporate atmosphere or culture in which safety is understood to be and is accepted as, the number one priority” .’ (Cullen, 1990, p300)

6. UK Health & Safety Executive, 1999“Reducing error and influencing behaviour”Companies should measure safety culture

7. Definition of safety culture • ‘The safety culture of an organisation is the product of individual and group competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management’ Advisory Committee for Safety on Nuclear Installations (HSC, 1993, p. 23)

8. Disentangle this.. • Individuals • Groups • Values • Attitudes • Competencies • Patterns of Behaviour • Commitment • Style • Proficiency • Health and Safety Management

9. Is safety culture… • Something the organization has? • Imposed on the organization (top down) • Can be measured and managed • Functional approach • Assumes culture can be changed through management interventions • Something the organization is? • Emerges from interactions between organizational members • Has a life of its own? • Interpretative approach • Assumes the culture is a pattern of underlying meanings and symbols that are not easily changed

10. Model of Safety Culture VISIBLE BEHAVIOUR (what people do) ESPOUSED VALUES (what is said) BASIC ASSUMPTIONS (what is believed) Adapted from Schein (1992)

11. Organizational layers Organizational Level: Management Supervisors Operations Technicians

12. What isbelieved What issaid What isdone Safety performance Safety Culture in a Nutshell Eurocontrol model

13. MODEL OF SAFETY CULTURE ECONOMIC, NATIONAL & REGULATORY INFLUENCES SOCIETAL CULTURE • Values • Beliefs • Norms • Assumptions • Expectations Set by Leaders? Organisational Culture Safety Management Practices Enacted by Leaders • H&S policy • Organising for H&S • Communication • H&S auditing • H&S training/promotion • Work/production pressure • Supervisor commitment • Management commitment Safety Climate Attitudesand feelings • Satisfaction with safety • Attitudes to reporting • Risk perception • Involvement • Risk-taking • Unsafe acts • Violations • Citizenship • Reporting • Learning Behaviour • Accidents • Incidents • Near-misses OrganisationalSafety

14. Safety culture should measure: • Values • Attitudes • Norms • Assumptions • Expectations • Extent to which these are ‘shared’ by members of the organization & across different groups

15. Measuring Safety Culture:Methodological Approaches Kathryn Mearns

16. Measures should have: • Validity • Face • Construct • Content • Discriminant • Predictive • Reliability • Consistent • Robust

17. Some Initial Requirements • Robustness • Strength of Evidence • SMS Coherence • SMS compatible (not competing) • Diagnosticity • Showing how to improve • Usability • Not too demanding of organization’s resources

18. Possible Approaches • Safety Culture Maturity • Enablers/Disablers • Interviews • Questionnaires/Rating Scales • Stories

19. Why do we need to waste our time on risk management and safety issues? • We take risk seriously and do something every time we have an incident • We have systems in place to manage all likely risks • We are always on the alert thinking about the risks that might arise • Risk management is an integral part of everything we do Pathological Safety Culture Maturity 1 2 3 4 5 Reactive (Parker & Hudson, 2001) Calculative Increasing maturity Proactive Generative

20. Safety Culture Enablers & Disablers • Just, Reporting & Learning Culture • Enablers: • Management believe that it is human to make errors • We learn from incidents in a way that people don’t feel they will be punished • Disablers: • Some people don’t report incidents because they believe they might get blamed • There is a lack of consistency in the organization regarding discipline and re-training

21. Enablers/Disablers • Enablers: • Operators stay in position during handover until incoming operator is comfortable with job • Agree  Disagree  • Disablers: • Operators sometimes have to deviate from the procedures to get their job done • Agree  Disagree 

22. Safety Culture Story: Developing trust

23. Management believe that it is human to make errors Questionnaire Rating Scales Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 • We learn from incidents in a way that people don’t feel punished Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree 1 2 3 4 5

24. Scenarios Possible error for the operator is higher in: Scenario A  Scenario B  No difference  Don’t know 

25. Collecting Evidenceduring semi-structured interviews • Number of reports • 1 person reports • 2 people report • 3 people report • 4+ people report • Type of evidence • Hearsay • Internal evidence • Public evidence • Change request Can provide evidence of how widely spread this view is held Can provide evidence of how trustworthy the evidence is (or important)

26. Evidence / stories • can provide a detailed assessment of how widely spread the issue is believed, and how important it is • can identify level of shared views between management and controllers • can identify specific areas where improvements could be targeted • aimed either at a specific group or in general

27. Eurocontrol approach • Questionnaire to determine what people perceive • Workshops to determine why people perceive things as they do and how to bring about change – workforce involvement • Scenarios used to develop questionnaire but not applied to safety culture measurement – used in ‘Safety Intelligence’ measurement