safety culture

Creating and cultivating a safety culture is one of the most effective ways to protect employees and ensure a safe workplace. But building a safety culture can be difficult. It takes time, effort, and commitment from everyone in the organization.

Ryan Sloan, safety manager for Birchcliff Energy, explains how two separate tragedies spur him on to change the way workers think.

Many leaders commit to the aspiration of no harm to people, but they may need help on the substance and actions that will make a difference. The authors share their insights gained from decades of robust experience in safety culture and performance improvement and where it succeeds or fails.

Culture, not controls, will drive the next phase of industry safety evolution, said presenters at a recent HSE conference.

The normalization of deviance is a major organizational cultural issue that is modeled and enabled by poor leadership and filters down through the organization with disastrous consequences for safety and operations.

Safety technologies, procedures, policies, and programs have all evolved, yet there still remains a lot of work to do in many industries and workplaces to transform safety behaviors and attitudes.

Safety culture can be distilled into nine characteristics predictive of safety outcomes. To improve safety performance and create lasting change in organizational culture, leaders can focus on developing 10 safety-specific leadership capabilities.

SPE Distinguished Lecturer Patrick Hudson discussed the types of safety culture found in organizations and the ways in which companies can improve their handling of noncompliant behaviors by employees.

Although offshore disasters are rare, they have resulted in significant loss of human life, environmental damage, and negative impacts on the larger society. We vow to learn from them, and address the technical challenges, but less often explore the role of culture, such as safety culture.