Organizational culture employee involvement

Getting employees involved in the development of the safety management system is particularly important to create ownership and buy-in. Employee involvement in the development of the safety management system will help to ensure that it fits within the existing organizational culture. 

A strong central structure can have an organizational culture that readily reinforces the safety process at all locations. The organization may have a general culture that espouses a participative style. This style is ideal to enhance the safety culture as it can increase employee involvement in the safety management system. 

The common theme in each of these cases is that employees were not involved in the process nor asked for their insight. Instead, a mandated solution was forced upon them. This type of approach is authoritarian and not a participatory organizational culture. If you continue to respond to problems with limited discussions and analysis, why would you then expect employees to want to be involved in solving safety issues Based on these lessons learned, take a look at your own organization to see if you can identify similar situations. 

As a point of beginning, determining if employees have a level of trust that the leadership team is serious about asking for their involvement in the safety process is crucial. In your evaluation of the organizational culture, an assessment of the level of trust between all employees provides an indication of the potential success of the safety management system. 

Some organizational cultures inhibit the kinds of behavior needed to reduce industrial injuries. Getting employees involved in safety is difficult within the context of top-down rules, regulations, and programs supported almost exclusively with the threat of negative consequences. In contrast, employee involvement is much more likely with top-down support of safety processes developed, owned, and continuously improved upon by work teams educated to understand relevant rationale and principles. 

The first main challenge is to prevent persistent and harmful employee conflicts - that is, the balance between diversity and similarity (or organizational norms ) can in some cases lean too far toward diversity. This implies that the differences in perspectives, behaviours and work concepts become dysfunctional and lead to culture clashes (Loden and Rosener, 1991). The manifestation of these involves misunderstandings, feelings of threat... 

One of the more recent organizational changes within pharmaceutical companies is the formal incorporation of CSR activities into the culture and managerial structures and processes of the firm. This formalization involves consolidating disparate activities into both corporate and affiliate management structures that will be objective-driven, transparent to employees, and complied with consistently across the corporations divisions. Operationalization is a deliberate, multi-year plan, and progress is measured according to achievements of specific objectives. 

In all of the model companies, safety is culture-driven. Senior management is personally and visibly involved and holds employees accountable for results. The senior executive staffs display by what they do that hazards management is a subject to be taken very seriously, a subject that is considered in performance measurement along with other organizational goals. 

Management, includes an expectation that the facilities will embrace a strong safety culture where safe performance of work and involvement of workers in all aspects of work performance are core values that are deeply, strongly, and consistently held by managers and workers. According to DOE, the aspects of this safety culture that impact safety performance are Leadership, Employee/ Worker Involvement and Organizational Learning (DOE, 2011). 

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