Assessing the Organizational Culture

Human beings are motivated by positive and negative forces by rewards and punishments. When it comes to safety there is no compromise. Although employees still need to be motivated, the motivation for safe behavior ultimately needs to be self-generated, arising from the commitment of each employee to remain safe. This commitment extends to co-workers, families, and the community [3]. 

Employees need to be invited and encouraged to examine their own thinking and their own commitments about safety. They need to focus on issues of responsibility and accountability and need to understand that they have the power and ability to cause their own safety, rather than 

The process to assess the safety culture is to determine the collective attitudes (perception) about safety. (Safety perception surveys are discussed in Chapter 17.) Confidential interviews are conducted with all levels of employees and management (see the discussion of independent reviews in Chapter 17). A strategic action plan model is developed where a new course is charted for instilling safety into the organization. The point is to design a new culture that is consistent with management and employees perception of the safety objectives [3]. 

To increase efficiency, many companies adopted the learning theory s stimulus/response model of behavior modification, where the employees who worked the fastest and produced the most results were rewarded with raises, promotions, or other positive reinforcers [3]. This relates to our discussion on rewards and doing a job faster to keep being rewarded. 

As we discussed, in this model, employees learned that working quickly was the preferred method for increasing efficiency, even though they may have started taking safety shortcuts, often putting their lives, or the lives of others, at risk. In effect, they were conditioned to believe that shutting down equipment, even in the name of safety, could be cause for being fired or reprimanded [3]. 

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