Organizational Culture and Safety Performance

Does your corporate culture promote safety? How can you make safety part of the corporate culture?

An organizational culture that supports safety is essential for the prevention of injuries and illness. Management systems and programs can provide an effective safety framework; however, it ultimately is the worker's perception of the value of safety to himself and the importance of safety to the organization that governs safety performance.

Simply put, for true performance, you need both the underlying systems and an organizational culture that supports them. This is often called "safety culture."

What is a safety culture? "Culture" is defined in my version of Webster's Dictionary as "the concepts, habits, skills, arts, instruments, institutions, etc., of a given people." This definition also can be applied to how organizations and the people who make up organizations feel about safety. The British Health and Safety Executive has one of the better definitions, which was derived from its work in the safety of nuclear installations. Paraphrasing, it defines safety culture as the product of the individual and group values, attitudes, competencies and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization's health and safety programs. Safety culture is "the way we do things around here," and reflects how we collectively value safety.

Organizational culture is learned quickly by those joining an organization, and is supported by the [organization's] survivors. It is learned by observing the successes and failures of their peers and others in the work environment, from written and unwritten organizational rules and through their own job experiences. Once established, it can be difficult to change corporate culture, since one aspect of essentially all cultures is that they resist change. This has been dramatically demonstrated by the failure of recent large merger …