Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and structures giving these activities importance. It is a group of symbols and meanings that contest, lack fixed boundaries, constantly change, and that interact and compete with one another then passed down from generation to generation. In context With health and safety management system, term ” culture ” became more specific, advanced and integrated to demonstrate how organisation’s performance, productivity, reputation are influenced by the “safety culture”.
Consequently “safety culture” of any organisation means the shared attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviours relating to health and safety which result from the shared attitudes, beliefs, competencies, perceptions and patterns of behaviour in the organisation, in order to determine the management’s commitment to health and safety management
Although “ Safety Culture ” is not written down or stated officially by laws, the organisation ( employer ) is responsible for establishing it in form of two way relation positive criteria between organisation and workers. Organisation set formal and informal rules, values, customs, intructions, policies, procedures taken together and passed through every level, from senior management to workers.On other side workers interpret how ” the distinctive feel of the organisation ” is ? how people perceive the organisation ? do they literally follow ways of doing things ?
Safety Culture Assessing indicators
Laws enforce Organizations to put in place suitable arrangements to manage for health and safety, so it was logically to assess, measure how health and safety management system by the organization to decide if it is on proper track or deviated, so more control measures are required along with more efforts for safety culture improvement.
How safety Culture is measured ?
Unfortunately it is quite difficult to assess safety culture directly because there is no one single feature or item that can be measured and almost all concepts are intangible. So it is perhaps better to assess it indirectly by looking at the tangible outputs that can be used as indicators.
Accidents
Accident records can be used to work out how many accidents are happening as a rate ( accidents per 100,000 hours worked ).
- Benchmarking Organisation’s accident rate with previous year to indicate whether the accident rate is increasing or decreasing.
- Compare Rate with other organisations in same industry sector or the industry average rates published by the authoritie
Absenteeism
A high level of worker absenteeism indicates that workers are either not able, or not willing, to come to work because either suffering ill-health caused or withholding their labour for some reason.
Sickness Rates
As same as accident rates , sickness rates can represent as safety culture indication. When a lot of ill-health cases caused by work leading to huge number of lost working days
Staff turnover
While organisation provides good place to work, high morale standard and all factors of Psychological comfort, workers stay with their employer for longer, so staff turnover rates may indicate to safety culture’s performance
Peer group pressure influence
When people are put together into groups they interact. Some individuals will have more influence over the group than others. safety culture pre-formed Certain ways of behaving that will become the “norm”. so the person wishing to become a member of the group will have to comply with the group norms according to safety culture
Prepare & prevent instead of repair & repent
– Safety Advisor
Compliance with staff rules
The safety culture has influenced workers’ behaviour so either the majority of workers want to work safely complying with the safety rules and procedures laid down by the organisation or opposite. Usually formal or informal safety inspections or audits can find the true level of compliance.
Complaints About Working Conditions
Safety culture and the number and type of complaints made by workers are linked , so logically when organisation provides good place to work, high morale standard , workers complain more less than otherwise. but generally safety culture shall open communication channel to report complaints.
Relationship between Safety culture and Performance
