Safety culture communications

Identify weaknesses and performance deficiencies Hold responsible parties accountable Conduct periodic management review of the system Cultivate a positive safety culture Commit to managing the safety culture Communicate to reinforce objectives... 

It s never too late to start, and each utility at any time has the opportunity to establish and convey its safety priorities and establish a positive safety culture. Communication and employee participation as outlined in the following secfions can improve the chances of success. 

Therefore, awareness that influences willingness, and leadership, but also new forms of communication and cooperation and a possible shift in corporate (safety) culture, are all crucial elements for ISP. Good and successful examples set by companies seen as peers may also strongly stimulate industry. Indeed, the production of the same pesticide produced by Union Carbide in Bhopal using a batch process was accomplished by DuPont using an inherently safer continuous flow process. 

Trust plays a central role in safety (Conchie et al. 2006). Studies have shown links between positive safety outcomes, and tmst in management (e.g., DePasquale and Geller 1999 Kath et al. 2010 Luria 2010), and tmst in co-workers (e.g., Tharaldsen et al. 2010). Tmst is also a key aspect of a positive safety culture (Bums et al. 2006), influences safety attitudes (Walker 2013), and influences the effectiveness of risk communication (Conchie and Bums 2008 Twyman et al. 2008). While there are clear safety benefits associated with tmst, safety benefits can also come from distmst (Conchie and Donald 2008), and this is likely to particularly be the case in relation to new employees in their initial period of employment. Tmst can reduce an... 

When used to accurately summarise risk, communicate controls and contribute to a safety culture, the safety case is an invaluable tool in assuring a HIT system. However, the value of the safety case can quickly be eroded should it be seen as an administrative exercise or a simple means to an end to satisfy management, a regulator or contractual requirement. All too often the potential hazards associated with a system are only thought about when development of the safety case begins. This... 

Developing an objective approach to risk management is as much about the language we use as it is the processes we put in place. Those who have the authority to undertake a safety assessment have a responsibility to wield that power carefully and shrewdly and this can quickly be undermined when one resorts to emotive and reactive language. This is as true for the language of the safety case as it is in the corridor conversations with colleagues. Those who operate in CRM have a duty to propagate objectivity by example and to communicate in a way that drives a safety culture which is not rash but considered. 

Unhealthy work atmospheres with respect to safety and communication are not limited to NASA. Carroll documents a similarly dysfunctional safety culture at the Millstone nuclear power plant [33]. An NRC review in 1996 concluded the safety culture at the plant was dangerously flawed it did not tolerate dissenting views and stifled questioning attitudes among employees. 

A.22. Management. The management s involvement in the facility and its effectiveness in paying appropriate attention to operational issues, including abnormal events, should be evaluated. In inspections it should be considered whether the organizational structure is suitable whether there are adequate numbers of staff how well management and staff communicate and how the management emphasizes the importance of safety and fosters safety culture. 

The most important element of any effort to engage and empower the workforce, and drive a company s culture toward world-class lean or safety, is communications. Effective communications are critical because it is through communications that you can gain trust. And only when you gain trust will the culture shift toward the intended direction. The definition of empowerment that I most often use is the downward flow of information. Therefore, what information can be provided to guide a so-so safety program, with minimal employee involvement, into one that other plants will want to benchmark Some of the topics listed below were already mentioned elsewhere in the book, but to fully understand the depth of safety communications available, I will restate your options. 

A dynamic safety culture recognizes these near-miss incidents as warnings as well as opportunities, and encourages employees to report them so that action can be taken on the warnings before they recur, perhaps with disastrous results. Not only will an organization be addressing what are in many instances accident precursors, but it will also create a communication network from employees directly to the chief executive officer. This communication channel, in many cases anonymous, is one of the key factors in forging a positive safety culture. 

Before one can plot the path ahead it would be opportune to establish where or how far along the path the company already is. The best way to do this is to establish a baseline by means of a complete safety and health audit of the safety status. The audit will tell where the organization fits in comparison to organizations running best practice safety systems and will also give an indication of the status of the existing safety culture. (Friend, 2012, personal communication)... 

The safety culture of an organisation is the product of the individual and group values, attitudes, competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation s health and safety programmes. Organisations with a positive safety culture are characterised by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety, and by confidence in the efficacy of preventative measures. 

If we will enhance safety culture and standardize employee safety behavior, it cannot leave the application of behavior-based safety management tools. The behavior-based safety management tools are an important means that is to effectively promote the safety culture of enterprise. At present, in SINOPEC comprehensive apvplication of HSE observation tools, its core is to conduct field observation and analysis and communication, to interfere with the way or intervention, make people know the dangers of unsafe behavior, prevent and eliminate imsafe behavior. 

An important safety culture element is communi-cation and consultations. Often the OH S knowledge and expertise that a company applies comes from consultants retained (Jarvis etal. 2008). Effective communication mechanisms within the organisation are critical to engage staff in safety activities, to gain cooperation and support, and to maintain positive safety culture. At the same time, clear and constructive safety coimnunication and cooperation with OPs can improve knowledge and understanding that prevents at-risk behaviour as well as enhance safe culture. 

This paper explores the role of trust within integrated operations (distributed work activities) and safety culture. In our study, we found that trust building is dependent on people s attitudes and communication skills concerning whether or not you succeed in creating a safety culture. The collaboration between onshore operators and onshore discipline experts is characterized by a mutually dependent relationship -based on their roles in the organization (the operational... 

Filho et al. (2010) developed a framework to measure safety culture in the Brazilian oil and gas companies. They applied a five level safety culture maturity model (e.g., pathological, reactive, bureaucratic, proactive and sustainable) using five dimensions (e.g., information, organizational learning, involvement, communication and commitment) to identify current state of safety practices in petrochemical companies. 

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