Safety Culture Concepts

A positive and mature safety culture promotes open dialogue on issues, discusses improvement strategies by engaging a broad array of employees, and will not tolerate deviation from established procedures. Many in an organization may not immediately internalize these seemingly soft concepts. It is the responsibility of management from the board of directors and senior executives downward to identify, develop, and nurture attributes of a healthy safety... 

Meshkati has recently studied the concept of a safety culture. Nuclear reactor operators responses to nuclear power plant disturbances is shown in Figure 1 (Meshkati et al. 1994, adapted from Rasmussen 1992). The operators are constantly receiving data from the displays in the control... 

It is perhaps reassuring to boldly state and accept that safety culture can t be measured, and more fundamentally neither can safety itself. This relieves us of the need to develop ever more complex measures of safety, more convoluted forms and inspection sheets, more detailed policies and procedures, and the bureaucracy that often sits alongside such paper-based approaches that reflect normative concepts of safety culture that don t really work in practice. Instead, this version of safety culture enables us to better prioritise the individual and social aspects that are inherently involved. How people understand safety is important how it is developed, associated and shared by those interacting in the work environment, what they consider significant in their actions and interactions. But we must remain mindful of the fact that this is not something that can be measured either. It is people that contribute and ultimately create the changeable and complicated version of safety culture in practice found on our construction sites. 

Cherishing life, preventing disaster, protecting the physical and mental health and safety of people is the key to promote economic development, social security and national stability. The core and the basic requirements of scientific development concept determine that the people-oriented takes human life first. In coal mine, as a high-risk industry, it is required to use more safe development to build consensus, strengthen the construction of safety culture, and enhance initiative and effectiveness. 

The culture, formation and development of safety culture idea directly affect the process of safety production and relate the survival and development of enterprises. Therefore, in the process of coal production, to establish the safety concept is the first. Only the formation of safety concept correctly, can effectively promote the safety production of enterprises. 

Restricted by the level of economic development and staff own quality, the safety concept of miners is generally we at present. It is in the dependent and passive position basically. They abide by the rules and regulations only because they are afraid of being punished. The so-called safety first and safety discipline consciousness is fuzzy. In addition, various safety regulations in some enterprises are to some extent on paper or verbal, not into a habit and behavior criterion of all employees, which is not enough to let them consciously accept and promote coal mine safety culture. 

Practice has proved that only continue to improve the quality of decision-making, management and safety culture of the first-line employees, in order to enhance the overall safety quality. The key to improving the quality of employee safety is an update of the concept. Encourage people to establish a correct concept of security, the most basic, and the most effective means of various forms of publicity and education and training. 

In this paper the current situation and existing problems of China s coal mines on the construction of a safety culture, based on human security principle and sphere slope principles of mechanics, a number of specific solutions for existing problems, such as the introduction of new equipment regulations, new technologies, new processes improve and deepen the concept of, regulate employee behavior development of cultural construction was about to incentive and restraint mechanisms organizations safety culture, cultural and recreational activities in the workplace, it is important... 

The safety culture action principle, behavior based attitudes theory and accident triangle principles work together to promote the change of zero accidents concept to zero accidents objective from three indispensable aspects of idea , action and methods , as is shown in Figure 4. Three principles commonly guide zero accidents concept, which is one of the key elements of safety culture, to strengthen enterprise safety management, prevent accidents and lessen accident rate, as follows ... 

Neither the first approach nor the second one is realized in its pure form. Each of them possesses the elements of the other. Nevertheless, proceeding fi om the concept SAFETY CULTURE [14], when developing the advanced RI, it seems necessary to use the approach most based on the inherent safety. 

The final box in Figure 1.3 is to do with the concept of safety culture—a topic that is the focus of much current discussion and development. This topic is discussed in Chapter 3. 

The first section— Risk (Chapters 1—3)— provides an overview of the concepts of risk and safety culture. It also covers compliance and case studies. 

Continued interaction among the specialists of Minatom and DOE along with other contributors will serve to establish a robust program to meet the needs in the area of nuclear materials safety, strengthen the concept of a safety culture, promote nonproliferation, openness and transparency between Russia and the United States, and facilitate the disposition of excess weapons materials in a safe and expeditious way. 

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. 

Culture can be seen as a concept that describes the shared corporate values within an organization which influences the attitudes and behaviors of its members. Safety culture is a part of the overall culture of the organization and is seen as affecting the attitudes and beliefs of members in terms of health and safety performance. 

Although primarily dealing with safety culture change at workplaces, non-work-related activities are important to the discussion because the work safety culture often rubs off on employees, who tend to take the safety concepts home with them and apply them both at home and at play. Structured SMS should have an element dedicated to off-the-job safety promotion as well. 

The safety policy statement is a substitute for repetitive management decisions and is mandatory. This is the guiding document in a safety system and perhaps the most important in implementing a change in safety culture. Although the concept safety should appear in the vision and mission statements of the organization, the safety policy statement is the declaration of the company s safety intent, commitment, and responsibility to constantly promote a safe and healthy work enviromnent. This policy should be extensively publicized and displayed on all notice boards, on the company website, in the employee safety handbook, and in prominent positions throughout the workplace. 

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