Assessing the Safety Climate

There are additional safety metrics techniques that can be used to assess the safety climate in an organization in terms of the organization s management, employees, and environment. The environment includes the physical environment, the equipment, and the interfaces between the workers and the work environment. Each area provides the safety professional with additional information to determine if the safety performance in the organization is at an acceptable level. 

Quizzes are a technique that can be used when a safety manager wishes to have employees demonstrate their degree of safety knowledge on a particular subject area. For example, an employee is asked to cut a form on a band saw. The employee is then 

Discrete observation of employees performing ajob taskmay be an indicator of their knowledge of how to perform the job safely, their ability to perform the job properly, and the attitudes toward safety in general. If an employee is observed performing the job task in an unsafe manner, there are several things that need to be investigated. 

the extent of the person s knowledge about how to perform the job safely must be determined. A common mistake for supervisors and safety managers is that when they see an employee performing the job in an unsafe manner, they assume the employee knew how to do the job correctly but chose not to perform the job correctly. Education, reeducation, and counseling the employee on the correct way to perform the job task should always be part of the performance improvement process. 

Second, if it is determined that the employee knew how to perform the job safely but chose not to, other factors, such as motivators and the employee s attitudes toward working safely, should be explored. Although the employee knew how to perform the job in a safe manner, motivators maybe present which reinforce the unsafe behavior. 

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Learning to feel helpless. When I help clients assess the safety climate of their workplaces, I often uncover an attitude among hourly workers, and some managers as well, that reflects an important psychological concept called "learned helplessness." For instance, when I ask workers what they do regularly to make their workplace safer, I often hear ... 

In a second step, pubUcations were reviewed for resrrlts on discriminant construct validity by searching for calculations of inter-correlations among the safety climate dimensiorts. In addition, internal consistency was reviewed by assessing Cronbach s alpha for each of the 12 dimensions. The results on Cronbach s alpha were compared to the original HSPSC version by Soria and Nieva (2004) as well as across Ettropean cormtries. 

Patient safety researchers have developed several surveys to assess patient safety climate, including the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ), AHRQ s Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (SOPS see Chapter 12 for more detailed information), and Patient Safety Climate in Healthcare Organizations. Our chapter provides an in-depth examination of the SAQ in terms of what it measures, key findings and limitations and future areas in need of research. 

A mission statement communicates the broad goals and the organization s commitment to safety, to employees, and to the public. A common theme found in safety policy statements is that of ongoing safety performance assessment and improvement. It is through the safety policy statement that an organization establishes the safety climate. 

For a safety program to be effective, the safety climate needs to be supportive of the program. The safety climate includes management, workers, the physical equipment in the workplace, and the interfaces between the people and the environment. Perception surveys can be used to assess the status of the safety climate in the workplace. Key areas that perception surveys can assess include management support for safety and employees attitudes and beliefs about safety. Environmental conditions and interfaces between equipment and workers can be assessed using various system safety techniques. Examples of system safety techniques include root cause analysis and failure modes and effects analysis. 

When auditing, sample conditions in one or more small areas, rather than attempting to cover the entire area. By varying the location of the audits, aU areas of audit responsibility can be assessed on a regular basis. Appropriate action during audits sets the safety climate within each department. Never let a safety violation pass without taking immediate corrective action. This reaction, or failure to react, shows employees what is acceptable and unacceptable to a supervisor. 

At times audits are driven by the frequency of injury potential for injury the severity of injuries new or altered equipment, processes, and operations and excessive waste or damaged equipment. These audits may be continuous, ongoing, planned, periodic, intermittent, or dependent on specific needs. Audits may also determine employee comprehension of procedures and rules and the effectiveness of workers training, assess the work climate or perceptions held by workers and others, and evaluate the effectiveness of a supervisor in his or her commitment to safety and health. 

Based on our assessment, we recommended that the culture change initiative build on the strengths identified in the safety climate and culture survey. NASA employees generally worked well as teams, liked and respected each other, and felt comfortable talking to peers. These strengths could be harnessed to create reinforcement mechanisms for behaviors that support the agency s values and desired culture. 

Huang, Y. H. et al. (2006). Safety climate and self-reported injury Assessing the mediating role of employee safety control. Accident Analysis and Prevention. 38(3), 425-433. 

Mearns, K. and Flin, R. (1999) Assessing the state of organizational safety - culture or climate Current Psychology Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, 18 (1) 5-17. 

Safety climate surveys are well embedded as measures of safety culture in industry and have also been translated and applied in healthcare (Abdullah et al. 2009 Cox and Cheyne 2000 Cox and Cox 1991 Coyle et al. 1995 Flin et al. 2006 Helmreich arid Merritt 1998 Meams et al. 1998, 2003 Modak et al. 2007 Nieva and Sorra 2003 Smits et al. 2008 Sorra and Nieva 2004). Safety climate is regarded as the surface features of the underlying safety culture (Flin et al. 2000). Surveys typically assess workforce perceptions of procedures and behaviours in the work environment that indicate the priority given to safety. 

Yule, S., Flin, R. and Murdy, A. 2007. The role of management and safety climate in preventing risk-taking at work. International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 7(2), 137-51. 

Cross-national studies require effective coordination within and between countries. We believe that the first step is a European netwoik of HSPSC users and, to a certain degree, the process of writing this chapter has contributed to such a network by identifying researchers and practitioners with an interest in safety climate assessment. Such a network would also help to connect groups within countries that have developed parallel versions (e.g. Spain and Italy). 

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