Behaviour and safety culture

A positive safety culture is often seen as the endpoint of the systematic efforts to improve safety. Once attained any hazards will be controlled in a coherent, supportive, constructive, even happy environment. But what is a positive safety culture There are many answers. The Confederation of British Industry lists eleven features  

1 Leadership and commitment from the top which is genuine and visible. This is the most important feature. 

2 Acceptance that it is a long term strategy which requires sustained effort and interest. 

3 A policy statement of high expectations and convepng a sense of optimism about what is possible, supported by adequate codes of practice and safety standards. 

4 Health and safety should be treated as other corporate aims, and properly resourced. 

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Leadership Behaviour and Safety Culture in the UK NHS A Manager s Perspeetive... 

Zenobia Talati is an Industrial/Organisational Psychology Masters and PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia Through her work as a research assistant, she has developed expertise in the areas of leadership, organisational culture/climate, workplace safely, safety leadership and proactivily. She has also co-authored a chapter on how leaders can improve employee safely behaviours and safety culture in high risk industries. 

Indicators might be directed at different aspects of health, safety and environment (HSE), such as major hazards, occupational hazards and illnesses, helicopter transportation hazards, physical and psychosocial working environment aspects, behaviours, attitudes and safety culture, as well as perceptions of risk (Vinnem 2010). The indicators may also differ according to types of damage, such as damage to persons, assets or environment (0ien et al. 2011b). 

SAFE BEHAVIOUR, SAFETY CLIMATE, AND SAFETY CULTURE... 

Middlesex University Business School (2004). Cultural influences on health and safety attitudes ami behaviour in small businesses, RR150, ISBN 0 7176 2742 X, HSE Books, 20 or at wwwJise. v.uk/re8eaich/nhtni/iTl50,htni. 

We discussed the use of system training as a control in Sect. 15.3. Whilst human factors generally represent controls at the least effective end of the spectrum many systems rely on the behaviour of users to mitigate risk to some extent. Training is one way by which users can be encouraged to adopt consistent behaviours and develop a culture of best practice. If one intends to justify in the safety case that risk... 

Hopkins, A. (2002) Safety Culture, Mindfulness and Safe Behaviour Converging Ideas , Working Paper 7, National Research Centre for OHS Regulations, The Australian National University. 

Baram, M. and Schoebel, M. (2007) Editorial safety culture and behavioural change at the workplace. Safety Science, 45(6), 631-6. 

Anyone entering a school building and special work areas will feel the atmosphere of the school or subject ethos. For example, when you walk into a primary classroom the wall displays, the behaviour of the pupils, the relationship between pupils and teacher all make up the culture of the school. If this embraces safety then posters/notices around the school reminding pupils of the need to Be Safe, provide good evidence that the school is endeavouring to promote a safety culture. 

The current chapter first presents some definitions of terms such as values , norms , attitudes and beliefs . It then focuses on how these factors relate to behavioural issues in the context and practice of safety management. Ortwin Renn has already discussed societal norms in relation to policy making by government and industry in Chapter 2 in this volume. In addition to the concept of societal norms, this chapter discusses national culture and how it can influence safety culture in the oil and gas industry. Finally, the chapter compares and contrasts the safety culture of the oil and gas industry with that of another industry, air traffic management (ATM), which is considered to be one the safest industries in the world. The possibility of learning lessons from this high-reliability industry are discussed. 

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