Organizational Environment and the Safety Culture

Another example would be responding to the fears associated with OSHA inspections and citations or to pressure from an insurance company to fix hazards or reduce costs. Short-term, Band-Aid approaches will not build a safety culture supported by employees. Workers recognize when budgets are provided for quick fixes and behave accordingly. Company motives are more transparent to employees than some managers believe. 

A value system is a set of convictions a person holds about a specific mode of conduct and the relative importance of those convictions. Value systems and principles serve the same purpose for organizations. Success depends on what is important to the organization. What an organization considers important is dependent upon what corporate management considers important. For both individuals and organizations, these are values. 

Six months into the two-year project, one of the major subcontractors responsible for multistory steel-beam erection had employees working over 30 feet in the air without fall protection. After the second observation of this violation, the plant safety manager ordered the workers down, informed the contractor of the repeat violation, and initiated the process to terminate the contract. The contractor was removed from the project and replaced by a firm that accomplished all the goals initially established by the textile manufacturer. The plant manager in this scenario did not compromise. As a result, the project was completed on time with only one OSHA-recordable injury. 

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