Safety Culture

“Organisational culture” seems to be an elusive concept that evades strict definition and identification, yet we all know what the culture is in any organisation we encounter and can describe its characteristics. A subset of “organisational culture” is “safety culture”, which is not immune to the same vagaries and adds another layer of abstractions.
Given the difficulties in describing and defining an organisations culture, one might expect it to be difficult to identify its origins and subsequently determine strategies for change. Many practitioners in the field of conclude that:

“Since culture is defined as ‘the collective belief of the group’, then we must change the beliefs of the individuals that comprise that group in order to change the culture”.

Changing the core personal values and beliefs of adults is extremely difficult, takes a long time and can cost an enormous amount of money. A sustained, conscious, deliberate effort must be maintained in order to embed the new behaviour expected and prevent a relapse to the old ways. Furthermore, such efforts are undermined by the forced requirement to concentrate on small groups of people in turn, making it very difficult to effect a tsunami sized sea-change.
The problem is the logic of the model is incomplete which undermines the entire process. What is missing from the is *why* those beliefs came into being and *how* they are persisted within the organisational systems. Schien (1992:12) says culture is:

“… a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved problems … that has worked well enough to be considered valid … and taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel”

The implication here is that by breaking the validations used to perpetuate the rules we will shift beliefs about the system itself. This provides a shortcut to cultural change - change the what is expected of the workforce and you will change the culture. Schein(1992:231) says it in this way:

“Leaders create culture by what they systematically pay attention to.”

I agree; If you change the Key Performance Indicators, you will change the performance and you will eventually change the beliefs (although, this is not that important). I recently gave a presentation to a safety group in Smithton covering this subject, which I have attached for your reference. Let me know what you think….
Safety Culture.ppt 14Mb Power Point file