Term Commitment from the Leadership

From the literature it emerged that management was the key influence of an organization s safety culture. A review of the safety climate literature revealed that employee perceptions of management s attitudes and behaviors towards safety, production and issues such as planning, discipline, etc. was the most useful measurement of an organization s safety climate. (HSE, 2002, summary page) 

Many managers will immediately point to the safety department and say that it s their job to manage safety and safety change. It needs to be spelled out very clearly at the beginning of the change intervention that safety culture change must start and be driven at the senior management level or else it will fail. The safety department will play its part, as discussed in Chapter 14. 

Some of the biggest initial challenges of the process will be resistance and reluctance from managers to take on this extra burden of safety. Safety paradigms taught them to believe that safety was the safety department s job. Now they have to carry the burden. Once authorities and accountabilities for safety and health have been written and incorporated into managers job descriptions, the amount of resistance will wane. 

We now understand clearly that one of the most important contributors to sustained— and improved—safety performance is leadership and the impact that leaders make by being available (visible and felt) in the workplace. Being accessible to employees while they are carrying out their day-to-day duties can make a very positive impact on the way employees view their leaders and can positively influence their behavior and performance. (Fourie, 2012) 

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