A Safety Cuture Tookit and Key Lessons Learned Peter Ackroyd Technica Head, Greenstreet Berman Ltd Introduction The recent Baker report (Ref 1) has again highighted the importance of safety cuture on the actua effectiveness of safety management arrangements, and how degradation can readiy occur even in mature organisations. It aso raises the chaenge of safety cuture assessment; what shoud be considered and how? Are there any pitfas in undertaking safety cuture assessments? The purpose of the paper is to prompt organisations to consider carefuy how to make best use of safety cuture assessments as part of an overa approach to safety management, without being seduced into fase perceptions of their own strengths and imitations. This paper has been prompted in part by recent work we have been undertaking. We have been deveoping a comprehensive web-enabed safety cuture tookit for an industry sector with our partners Enabe Infomatrix. This tookit is a significant deveopment of safety cuture assessment and guidance toos. This demonstrates that advanced toos can be deveoped that permit routine safety cuture assessments to be easiy undertaken and interpreted. It shows that simpe to use, on-ine toos can greaty aid process industry companies to assess key aspects of their safety cuture and hep to identify improvements. It raises the possibiity for deveoping simiar process industry tookits that coud be used to address process safety cuture and offer great opportunities to share good practices within an organisation or across the process industry. The trias of the tookit aong with our coective experience of safety cuture assessment has raised the whoe issues of the objectives and appropriate use of safety cuture assessment i.e. for continua improvement not merey acceptance. This paper considers the imitations and cautions that need to be paced on use of assessments to ensure that organisations do not misead themseves and beieve they are better than they are. It considers the key aspects of safety cuture that process industries shoud address to avoid the types of pitfa demonstrated so ceary by the Texas City incident. It draws on experience of other safety cuture assessment approaches to highight the potentia for interna anchoring. The paper concudes with thoughts for the process industry on effective use of safety cuture assessment as a means to avoiding compacency. It reates back to the chaenge of Organisationa Drift and the Baker pane recommendations foowing Texas City. Part 1 The Safety Cuture Tookit Over the ast two years Greenstreet Berman has been deveoping an advanced web-based safety cuture tookit. This permits companies readiy to undertake safety cuture assessments
and conduct immediate anayses of their resuts. Importanty, the tookit provides guidance on improvement strategies that are targeted in response to the assessed cuture; it aso provides a genera source of usefu information on safety cuture and its improvement. Trias of the tookit with companies have been very successfu. However, the resuts from the two companies have pointed to potentia imitations of any survey based approach to assessing safety cuture, particuary via interna anchoring i.e. that reative insuarity means peope can ony judge on their imited experience and do not respond in an adequatey absoute manner. An Overview of the Tookit The tookit is web-based and has three main eements: A Usefu Information area providing a source of reference on safety cuture and generic advice on safety cuture improvement The main safety cuture assessment area based around a questionnaire that incorporates an extensive automatic anaysis and interpretation capabiity, incuding benchmarking against a or seected registered users A Good Practice area that currenty contains around 70 exampes and is formatted to aow exchange, incusion of additiona exampes The tookit permits companies, once registered, to taior their own confidentia area within the overa tookit by adding news items. Company confidentiaity is ensured as no registered users are abe to access the sites and resuts of other companies (other than via the benchmarking report). Simiary individua confidentiaity is ensured via a variety of means. The safety cuture assessment survey is the core assessment too and it comprises a questionnaire that has been deveoped using essons gained from research into safety cuture assessment approaches. It foows simiar safety cuture attitude surveys. The key advances are in its anaysis and accompanying interpretation. The tookit permits a very comprehensive set of anayses to be undertaken and provides both text and graphica outputs. The tookit comprises both generic and specific guidance; this has been deveoped from review of the atest safety cuture deveopments. The guidance is based on iterature and modes that have gained considerabe use and credibiity; and that aow the users to gain maximum insights into understanding their safety cuture and how to improve it. Piot Trias & Lessons Learned Two companies have undertaken fu company surveys using the draft tookit. These were very successfu both companies being impressed with the genera ease of use of the tookit and particuary how easy it was to undertake anayses. As the tookit is web-based it 2
permits rapid access to the resuts by a (with appropriate company authorisation) to run and view the resuts. This permits the tookit to be used at a oca eve by managers as we as considering the overa company. The resuts of both companies showed that the genera safety cuture in both organisations were good and enabed a variety of key issues to be identified, for exampe: Differences between departments A notabe difference between one ocation and a others A noted difference in the genera eve of satisfaction in safety standards between front ine staff and their immediate supervisors/managers In detaied discussions, a of the resuts obtained refected we on the companies safety professionas view of issues within the company. The resuts generated by the two companies did highight some key issues that are important when undertaking any attitudina safety cuture assessment. The main issues being: What shoud safety cuture assessments reay be used for, and what shoud they measure? What are the hidden issues to be aware of? How important is an externa perspective on any safety cuture assessment? These are raised and discussed in the second part of this paper. The Impications The deveopment of this type of safety cuture tookit shows that some very effective safety cuture assessments toos can be deveoped for industry sectors, or organisations, to use without requiring extensive externa support. Further more such web-based toos provide many additiona benefits to the user organisations. In particuar, anayses and use of the assessments can be given to a much wider range of ine managers and empoyees to hep oca improvements. Additiona benefits incude: The capabiity of sharing good practices quicky and effectivey Benchmarking across an organisation or industry sector Taioring the questionnaire to meet specific industry sector/organisation needs The chaenge for safety cuture assessment, particuary if such sef-hep comprehensive toos become avaiabe is to ensure that they are used appropriate to aid improvement and do not unwittingy ead organisations astray. Part 2 Safety Cuture Assessment How to Use Effectivey Our experience over many years of differing approaches to measure safety cuture in some guise or other is that they can be very usefu and provide very vauabe insights IF
used appropriatey. They can be positivey mis-eading or even dangerous if used inappropriatey. Key issues from our experience, and re-highighted from the safety cuture tookit project incude the foowing. What s the purpose? Safety cuture assessments (based on attitudina questionnaires and workshops) can provide some very usefu insights into the reative strengths and weaknesses within an organisation. Hence this can provide a very usefu patform for continuous improvement. However, attitudina approaches particuary questionnaires, shoud not be used on simpe pass/fai or acceptabe/unacceptabe basis. Responses to questionnaires can be open to many infuences incuding other issues affecting staff within the organisation (e.g. pay & conditions; immediate manager; interna anchoring ) and this can significanty imit their abiity to be used as an absoute measure of performance. The judgements based against fixed or absoute vaues are ikey to be mis-eading, and it is far more usefu to use the resuts to identify comparative differences in responses to hep identify strengths and weaknesses. This paces imitations on the usefuness of benchmarking between surveys. What to measure? The safety cuture tookit questionnaire is simiar to others incuding the HSE CST questionnaire in that, arguaby, it tends to address genera safety i.e. primariy reating to the H&S of empoyees. For many organisations this is ikey to be the most appropriate topic to consider. However, the BP experiences at Grangemouth (2000) and Texas City (2006) and findings of the Baker report show that management can become excessivey focussed on, and mis-ed by simpe empoyee LTA type indicators. So any assessment of safety cuture needs to start from considering what aspects of safety this organisation/sector shoud be reay concerned with. The answer may we be that there is more than one aspect of H&S that needs to be considered. Consequenty for some organisations/sectors having safety cuture questionnaires to tacke each key area may be required. The Baker report incudes a process safety safety cuture questionnaire used to provide a greater focus on key issues for this area. The author s experience in the nucear industry is that severa non-nucear safety measurement approaches were adopted, which caused unease amongst many technica speciaists as they did not appear to provide sufficient focus on nucear safety issues. Interestingy, companies won severa safety awards at the same time as having a series of incidents on nucear reated safety issues. Attitudina surveys by themseves are not sufficient to identify a key issues; it is imperative to use them to compement the insights gained from other safety performance measures and audits. They can revea hidden issues that may otherwise be missed. 4
Issues to consider Interna anchoring the recent tookit survey resuts were very good, indeed better than envisaged based on other knowedge on the safety performance and cuture. Detaied discussions reveaed that in comparison with other types of rai companies, these were ikey to be amongst the best performing, and that staff were generay very content with the companies. Aso most empoyees have itte experience outside the rai industry. A ikey expanation of the better than judged responses is interna anchoring i.e. the respondents are making the judgments against their own experiences but if these have (coectivey) been very imited they do not represent judgement against an objective goba or absoute scae. Very simiar experiences occur with other organisationa assessment approaches. Peer evauation processes in the nucear industry often show that staff judge things to be acceptabe, but an internationa peer assessment team has very different judgements on the standards. Research into the deveopment of a new safety cuture assessment approach (SCART ) in the nucear sector (using behavioura descriptions on key topics) SCART = Safety Cuture Assessment & Rating Too deveoped by British Nucear Group (Reactor Sites) 5
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showed very different assessments between station staff sef-evauation; corporate H&S staff evauation, and that undertaken by an internationa peer review team. The corporate staff and internationa peers perceiving the safety cuture to be significanty ower than the interna sef-evauation. This potentia interna anchoring is particuary reevant in industries that are reativey insuar and suggests that obtaining an externa perspective on the resuts is ikey to be very usefu. It aso reinforces the message that improvements shoud be driven from the comparative differences reveaed by a survey rather than just judging on the absoute vaues. Buiding on the existing cuture survey resuts aow greater insights to be gained into the existing cuture, and hep to identify reative strengths and weaknesses. Any improvement strategy shoud be based on buiding onto the existing cuture, particuary its strengths. The reative success of many safety improvement initiatives (e.g. behavioura observation programmes) are dependent on whether the cuture (or key aspects of it) is right. Being prepared to respond safety cuture surveys tend to have a high profie within an organisation when impemented and create workforce expectations on the response. Doing a survey then not being seen to respond adequatey is neary aways worse than not doing a survey at a. Consequenty any organisation considering undertaking a safety cuture assessment shoud aready have panned and prepared as to how it intends to respond and that it matches the expectations of the workforce. Not just a measurement too any high profie safety cuture assessment shoud not just be viewed as a means of measurement. This woud be missing a trick in the overa safety improvement strategy. Due to the high profie and expectations it creates, a safety cuture assessment can hep energise and create focus and interest in safety improvement. This is as much a benefit from the exercise and the insights it provides. Summary The web-enabed safety cuture tookit represents a significant step forward in safety cuture assessment and improvement. It permits organisations to sef-hep with minima externa input and provides the organisation, or industry sector to aow much easier access and use of attitudina based surveys. However its ease of use and capabiities aso make it even easier for organisations to mis-use or be ed astray by the resuts of safety cuture surveys. If used appropriatey such assessments are a significant additiona weapon to use to improve safety cuture and prevent significant accidents occurring. The onus is on organisations to criticay consider the key aspects of safety that they need to address and taior their safety cuture assessments accordingy. Simiary effective use of the resuts and insights gained from such assessments needs organisations to be wiing to use the toos in appropriate ways. As with any too, it is ony a too and its users to use it as intended. Acknowedgements Enabe Infomatrix have been a key partner in deveoping the tookit; without their IT expertise it woud not have been possibe to create the tookit. Thanks to a who have been 7
invoved in the deveopment, particuary to Coin James a the hours of detaied discussions and deveopment to hep turn the ideas into a practica product. References 1. J.A. Baker et a January 2007 The Report of the BP U.S. Refineries Independent Safety Review Pane 2. HSE Heath & Safety Cimate Survey too, 1997 8