Safety culture, external influences

Audit is an overview across the organisation of the entire risk management process. It should consider whether the objectives are sufficiently comprehensive to cover all hazards and their effects on all those persons (internal and external) who may be affected. It should include the objectives and management style of the directors and their influence on the safety culture of the organisation. It can use data from the review of performance to assess the strengths of the organisation and those aspects where improvement is necessary. 

No organisation operates in isolation. Despite all the good intents and actions of management, the safety culture of organisations is influenced significantly by external forces which are, in the main, outside the control of management. 

Key among the external influences impacting on the safety culture are ... 

Consequences motivate behavior and related attitudes. This happens in various ways. Consequences can be positive or negative, intrinsic (natural) or extrinsic (extra) to a task, and internal or external to a person. These characteristics need to be considered when designing and evaluating intervention programs. This chapter explains why and provides principles arid practical procedures for motivating people to work safely over the long term. In other words, I shall show you how to influence behavior and attitudes so that both are consistent with a Total Safety Culture. 

The psychology of safety requires us to consider both external behavior and internal person factors. Chapter 15 focused on the role of person states in influencing people to actively care for another person s safety and health. Chapter 16 showed how outside factors can be manipulated to influence these person states and, thus, increase actively caring behavior. A Total Safety Culture requires integrating both behavior-based and person-based psychology. The next several principles focus on understanding "inside" factors. 

The difference in safety levels can be traced to many differences between the two systems, including the nature of the systems (variety of demand and the nature of flow through the systems), resources (variety of equipment and the degree of proceduralisation), the natme of hazards and defences (especially variety and controllability and external defences), the nature of external constraints (political intervention and individual liability) and the nature of the organisational and professional cultures (variety of subcultures, attitude to error and occurrence reporting and dominant cultural influencers, e g. controllers). 

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