Best Practice in Organizational & Safety Culture

Our organization is growing and we are receiving new employees. It has come to my attention that our previous safety policy and procedure seem to be outdated. This paper is to provide all employers and fellow employees information of the policy. There will be many different topics discussed. Please pay close attention to these policies because they are important.

In general, safety culture refers to the ways that safety issues are addressed in a workplace. This paper talks about the contrast of safety culture of the US nuclear navy under Adm. Hyman Rickover with the Culture of NASA at the time of the Challenger disaster. It focuses on the operation of high-tech organizations, when they focus on safety versus when they do not.

The following report examines questions on a psychological approach to health and safety. To answer these question, a review of Section 1: Orientation and alignment from Chapters 1-3: of the Psychology of Safety Handbook was done. The report examines the author’s approach to the human element or the psychology of safety in the workplace.

This model was also successful in limiting relatively simple type of incidents. The result of the research around human behaviour in an organisational context reveals that 88% of accidents are due to unsafe work behaviours. However, this result emphasise that strategic program should include data gathered from other field, such as industrial and organisational behaviour for promoting safety culture within the system. In addition, as there is only a single triggering factor that leads to an accident, it is rather more straightforward to control and prevent the cause or impose recommendation (Health and Safety Professional Alliance,2012).

Great strides towards a safe workplace environment have been made in the construction industry. Hinze (1997) assume that the written safety plans have the potential to be very effective, but companies ought to go ahead of the safety plan and build a suitable “safety culture”. The construction industry offers a thrilling and dynamic atmosphere. The flow of exclusive projects, the on-site operational environment, and the inventiveness and innovation required to solve one-off troubles require a creative approach to work which is seldom found elsewhere. The problem of safety culture - What is it and how do you become one? - is probably the main issue in modern thinking about safety (Turner and Pidgeon, 1997). Most attention has been paid to the issue of safety climate (Zohar, 1980), a concept easier to measure, but the underlying expectation is that the best and safest organizations have a safety culture, and safety climate which is an indirect measure of how close an organisation approximates to that.

Safety culture has taken on many varieties of definitions since the term first appeared in 1986 but a version I particularly identify with is as follows: “A set of values, perceptions, attitudes and patterns of behavior with regard to safety shared by members of the organization; as well as a set of policies, practices and procedures relating to the reduction of employee’s exposure to occupational risks, implemented at every level of the organization, and reflecting a high level of concern and commitment to the prevention of accidents and illnesses.” (Fernandez-Muniz et al., 2007, p. 628)

First of all, definitions of safety culture have been born primarily from the more basic concept of organizational culture (Weigmann et al., 2004). This presents a workable framework in which to define safety culture because of the division into two rather large categories: the organizational psychology and the socio-anthropological psychology angles (Weigmann et al., 2004). The organizational culture category entails more traditional and analytical methods than does the socio-anthropological one. Specifically, this perspective presupposes that organizational culture can be broken down into smaller units that are empirically more measurable and manipulated (Shein, 1991) cited from (Weigmann et al., 2004). It would seem then that organizational culture would be more useful to the researchers ' purposes than the socio-anthropological approach. This is not to minimize the later approach; rather, it allows for comprehension of each approach more clearly when studied together.

Culture is the common beliefs and ways of doing things shared between those who learned their ways in the same environment. Safety culture is, however much of the same with a developed attitude towards safety. Safety culture can be strong, where people within an organization report incidents that occur or even when they had the opportunity to occur. On the other hand safety culture can also be poor where incidents are hidden or swept under the carpet and no action can be taken to decrease the possibility of it from happening again. Tools have been developed to assess the safety culture in many different organizations, usually those that have a high risk. Rules and regulations are typically implemented following incidents resulting in fatalities. Nuclear, medical and aviation are some of the main industries that have begun assessing safety culture within their organizations and implementing SMS systems to help distinguish situations that could have potentially caused an incident.

Safety, Health and Environmental (SHE) Manager, at a Top Tier COMAH site that develops and manufactures rocket and missile propulsion systems specifically for the defence industry. Supporting and guiding management and departmental staff in all aspects of health and safety proactively and reactively along with mentoring appointed SHE Advisor and also assisting the Safety Process Engineer with all aspects of the COMAH requirements. Introduced auditing tools for both Health & Safety (HSG65 PDCA using the ISO 18001 standard) and Environmental (ISO 14001 standard).

Safety culture: Thai AirAsia encourages safety environment by proceeding Safety Management System with safety committee and reporting to CEO to ensure that the company achieve the sustainable safety culture.

Therefore , risk assessment methods are used to removes this problems. To reduce or eliminate the risk , selection through design of facilities, equipment and processes should be choose or done precisely. Furthermore, the risk can also be minimize by the use of physical controls. For example the company should provide safety training program including first aid, fire fighting and survival techniques. With the skills that have been taught, the workers can perform their work more safe as they know how to survive if accidently mistakes were done Moreover , wearing protective equipment is compulsory in reducing the risk. Furthermore , employee also must know their individual skills of their workers. This to ensure the job given suits and matched with their expertise and if the job were wrongly given , this may lead to unexpected accidents. In addition , reporting system and frequency should be maintained as to monitor the activity of the workers and the process done. Monitoring the worker also will make they done their job seriously and not

Safety culture is defined as consisting “of shared beliefs, practices and attitudes, that exist at an establishment. Culture is the atmosphere created by those beliefs, attitudes, etc.” (Middlesworth, M., February 19). In recent years, safety culture has become an aspect which most, if not all, companies and organizations require in order to succeed. What is difficult is how to measure or assess the safety culture currently present in that organization. What one can do to assess whether or not a company promotes a positive safety culture is to look at 6 critical components: organizational commitment, managerial involvement, employee empowerment, accountability system, communication and a reporting system. A successful company with a positive safety culture will consist of the majority of the aforementioned components. Without these elements, a company’s safety culture will appear non-existent and even if a safety management system is utilized, it may not be enough to promote the proper safety culture. By identifying specific characteristics of each component we will be able to recognize how to build a positive safety culture and how to implement an effective SMS.

With the expectation from CASA for newly established flight operations to design and implement a Safety Management System (SMS) the task has been set to do so for an airline with 12 regional aircraft and 200 employees. The aim of an SMS is to monitor and manage the overall safety operations that occur within an airline. The use of an SMS has proven extremely successful as it solidifies the communication between operators and management. An SMS consists of four (4) main components: Safety assurance; Safety risk management; safety promotion; and safety policy. Each of these components plays a major role in ensuring the safe operation of an airline.

Aviation safety is one of the major concern for everyone who is directly or indirectly involved in this sector. As since last five decades we can see that aviation safety have been improving steadily. Similarly accident rate has also decreased significantly. In last decade, accidents rate had also been stable. Not only these, but also

By providing the users with its benefits of confidentiality and partial immunity, it draws people in to report the problems that will be used for future identifications and research. Several researchers have already used the data provided by the system to create further safety information within the aviation field, although the amount of data the gathered was rather limited and needed a further boost, which the ASRS system can provide if the majority of personnel are aware of its existence. Furthermore, a majority of the research literature so far has all been based on the data that the ASRS has stored, but almost no research has been done on the ASRS awareness within the aviation community. If the proper research is done on the ASRS and the knowledge of it of the aviation sector, the field would view a greatly increased input of data and create a truly preventative system that create an overall safer environment. The current state of awareness of the ASRS system within the aviation community is severely inconspicuous and under used. Through the proposed research, additional data will be collected to clearly identify a percentage of people that are aware of the ASRS program and know how to utilize it.