Safety culture is the way an organisation really does things when it comes to health and safety: the shared values, attitudes and behaviours that decide whether people work safely when no one is watching. A positive safety culture is built on visible leadership, trust, open reporting and learning, and it can have as big an influence on safety as the safety management system itself.
Key facts
- HSE describes culture as “the way we do things around here”, and says an organisation’s culture can have as big an influence on safety outcomes as its safety management system.
- The largest influences on safety culture, according to HSE, are management commitment and style, employee involvement, training and competence, communication, compliance with procedures, and organisational learning.
- Every organisation has a safety culture, good or bad. RSSB describes it as “the way things are done when no one is watching”.
- Changing it takes time: HSE says a culture change process can take several years.
- It can be measured, for example with HSE’s Safety Climate Tool, which scores organisations against eight health and safety factors.
What is safety culture?
The most widely used definition comes from a 1993 report by the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (ACSNI), which HSE still uses:
“The safety culture of an organisation is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management. Organisations with a positive safety culture are characterised by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures.”
In plain terms, safety culture is what people believe about safety and how that shows in what they actually do, especially under pressure.
What does a positive safety culture look like?
HSE highlights four key aspects:
- Management commitment: health and safety gets real time, money and people, and is given the same status as production and cost.
- Visible management: managers lead by example, are regularly seen at the workplace, talk about safety and act on it, even when that means stopping work.
- Good communication at all levels: safety is part of everyday conversation, and managers listen and act on what they hear.
- Active employee participation: people are involved in risk assessments and decisions, and safety is seen as a joint effort.
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) describes a positive safety culture as one that is:
- a reporting culture, where people routinely report errors, near misses, unsafe conditions and concerns;
- a just culture, which is seen as fair, avoiding both a blame culture and a “no-blame” culture where sloppy practice creeps in;
- a flexible culture, where decisions are made by the people best placed to make them, whatever their grade;
- a learning culture, where incidents are treated as opportunities to improve and lessons are shared widely.
What are the signs of a poor safety culture?
HSE lists symptoms that include:
- widespread, routine breaches of procedures;
- failure to follow the organisation’s own safety management system;
- management decisions that consistently seem to put production or cost before safety.
Other warning signs include people being reluctant to report concerns, and the same incidents happening again because lessons aren’t acted on.
9 key points to improving safety culture
These are the principles we follow at RSS Infrastructure.
1. Lead from the top
A strong safety culture needs visible commitment from senior leaders and a clear safety vision that everyone understands. Everyone, from the managing director to the newest recruit, has to be committed to it.
2. Involve your people
Employees know their own work best. Involve them in safety training, risk assessments and decisions, and make sure communication runs both ways.
3. Train for competence
Train people to do their jobs safely, tailored to the task and refreshed regularly, so they understand the safety rules and their own role in keeping themselves and others safe.
4. Give clear, simple instructions
Safety instructions should be clear and easy to follow, so people can complete a task safely without hunting through several sources of information.
5. Coach through safety conversations
Regular safety conversations between managers and teams, backed by coaching and mentoring, help people spot and correct unsafe conditions for themselves.
6. Treat mistakes as learning, fairly
Mistakes should be seen as opportunities to learn, not to punish. A fair, “just” approach means people are not blamed for honest errors, while reckless behaviour is still addressed.
7. Make it easy and safe to speak up
Encourage everyone to report concerns and close calls, however minor, without fear of reprisal, and recognise people who do. If a concern isn’t reported, it can’t be fixed.
8. Act before something goes wrong
Don’t wait for an accident. Gather the facts, find the root cause of incidents and close calls, and share the lessons across the business.
9. Use technology to support safety
Technology can make reporting quicker and help control hazards, from reporting apps to safety systems such as track warning systems and geofencing.
How do you measure safety culture?
HSE recommends starting by measuring your existing culture, for example with a safety climate survey or simply by talking to your workforce. HSE’s Safety Climate Tool scores an organisation against eight factors: organisational commitment, health and safety oriented behaviours, health and safety trust, usability of procedures, engagement in health and safety, peer group attitude, resources for health and safety, and accident and near-miss reporting.
HSE’s advice is to act on the results, feed them back to employees and repeat the measurement to track progress, and to make sure senior managers are prepared to have their own perceptions and behaviours examined too.
Safety culture on the railway
The rail industry has its own safety culture resources. RSSB publishes guidance and tools for measuring and improving safety culture, and ORR’s guidance on managing fatigue sets out the features of a positive safety culture described above. Network Rail’s safety vision is “Everyone Home Safe Every Day”.
At RSS Infrastructure, our health and safety team is led by Group Head of Health & Safety Debbie Haines. Our people report close calls through the RSS app, and as a CIRAS member, anyone working with us can also raise a concern in confidence.
Sources
- HSE: Organisational culture: overview
- HSE: Inspectors’ human factors toolkit, Common topic 4: Safety culture (PDF)
- HSE Books: Safety Climate Tool
- ORR: Features of a positive safety culture
- RSSB: Safety culture
