Health and Safety Culture

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19.3 Health and Safety Culture

When a pattern of behaviour becomes widespread in an organisation it can be described as the organisational culture. Culture can be a nebulous concept – a simple definition is “how we do things around here”. This simple definition illustrates how culture and behaviour are linked and provides an objective way to assess culture by collecting information on observed behaviours. Culture defines the unwritten rules of an organisation - how things really work, in contrast to what is supposed to happen. Culture reflects the underlying attitudes and values of the organisation. Once a behaviour becomes embedded in the organisations culture it can be hard to change. It would be pointless encouraging an individual to change his or her behaviour if everyone else continued to behave differently. Peer pressure would ensure that the worker reverted to the cultural norm as soon as possible. In such a situation, the only way to change behaviour is to address the culture. Culture change is a major long term project and requires extensive preparatory work. An organisations culture can be said to be positive for health and safety if it encourages behaviours that minimise incidents and exposure to risk. For example, in a positive culture it would be normal for workers to report promptly any defects in control measures; to wear protective equipment correctly; to follow safe working procedures. Similarly, managers would be expected to visit the workplace regularly to check on health and safety; to discuss health and safety with their employees; to act promptly on reports of deficiencies Negative cultures are often characterised by fear and blame, which inhibit reporting of dangerous conditions and inhibit improvement. Employees flout the rules and managers turn a blind eye. It has been observed that when identical behavioural safety initiatives are implemented in different organisations, the success of the initiatives varies significantly. In some places an initiative might bring positive change, whereas elsewhere it will fail. How could this be so? Initial research in the oil and gas industry revealed that the success of such safety initiatives was 185 dependent on pre-existing levels of safety culture development. Different sites even within the same organisation, although apparently similar, differed in the how well-developed their safety culture was, and some were not “ready”. To help ensure the success of a safety culture improvement initiative, this initiative needs to be “matched” to the site‟s existing safety culture level. This also means that the most appropriate type of safety culture improvement initiative will change as its level of safety culture improves. What might have helped the company‟s safety culture progress from the lower levels of development will not be the same type of initiative that will help it obtain excellence. Level 1 Negative Level 2 Directive Level 3 Engaging Level 4 Embedded Level 5 Excellent Next step… •Managers set standards •Supervisors monitor compliance •Focus on following rules Next step… •Managers actively encourage •Supervisors involve their team •Everyone gets involved Next step… •EHS improvement becomes integral part of everyday business •EHS success depends upon each other Next step… •Everyone consistently demonstrates excellent EHS behaviours •Managers are invisible on EHS •Supervisors emphasise production •Many people disregard rules Source: GlaxoSmithKline Figure 19.2 - An example of a culture maturity ladder The example of a health and safety culture maturity ladder displayed above describes 5 levels of culture. Each level reflects the behaviours and involvement in health and safety of everyone on site. Starting at Level 1 where production is emphasised, people disregard the rules and managers are not visible, up to Level 5 where all levels consistently demonstrate the right behaviours. There are a number of steps that need to be taken in order 186 to move up each level of the ladder. If an organisation tried to move from Level 1 to Level 4 or 5 in one leap the initiative would be likely to fail. 187 20 WORK-RELATED STRESS Psychosocial aspects of the work environment have been increasingly recognised in recent years. Prob lems associated with “work-related stress” are now considered a central issue in the management of health and safety. In many developed countries cases of “mental ill health” represent the single most common cause of work-related illness. Well-designed, organised and managed work helps to maintain and promote individual health and well-being. But where there has been insufficient attention to job design, work organisation and management the benefits and benefits associated with work can be lost. One common result is work-related stress. By the term work-related stress we mean the effects arising where work demands of various types and combinations exceed the person‟s capacity and capability to cope. It is a significant cause of illness and disease and is known to be linked with high levels of sickness absence, staff turnover and other indicators of organisational underperformance - including human error. The design and management of work is important in anticipating, recognising and preventing stressful situations. Of course, many of the greatest stressors in life occur outside the workplace and it is often not possible to avert stress simply by focussing on workplace issues. Many large organisations now offer resilience training to their employees to help them manage work-life balance and avoid stress for themselves. For people experiencing stress, though, it needs to be diagnosed and treated in a timely fashion so that the worker can be rehabilitated.

20.1 Symptoms of stress