© Dov Zohar 1

Management values, Leadership, and Safety climate

Dov Zohar, PhDIsrael Institute of Technology

dzohar@tx.technion.ac.il

Summit meeting, Copenhagen, 2007

© Dov Zohar 2

Key ideas

There is nothing more practical than a good theory(K. Lewin)

• Define climate and culture: both are ill-defined

• Identify the sources of climate: culture & leadership

• Proper metrics as key to managing culture/climate

What gets measured, gets rewarded hence managed

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A practical theory for Safety Climate

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What is organizational climate?Functional view

• Climate reflects shared (socially verified) assessments of the workplace, i.e. which behaviors are likely to be rewarded & supported (collective sense-making)

• Such shared perceptions are valuable in ambiguous situations: competing operational demands (safety vs. speed), espoused policies vs. enacted practices

• Safety climate reveals the perceived priority or value of acting safely, as assessed and mutually verified by employees (leaders’ daily actions as main cues)

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Climate as indication of true priorities‘walk-the-talk’ test

• Use a safety-climate scale whose items refer to supervisory/peer practices in situations where safety and production present competing demands

• Members pay special attention in such situations because they provide clearest indication of the truepriorities (role behaviors likely to be supported)

• Multilevel model: Strategic and supervisory leaders may adopt divergent priorities (bounded variation), resulting in distinctive group- and org. level climates

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Measuring climateMultilevel model

Safety-climate scales should identify managerial/peer practices under competing demands (speed vs. safety)

Employees discriminate between practices of senior vs.supervisory leaders (use different cues)

Scale items (Zohar & Luria, 2005):

My supervisor-• Refuses to ignore safety rules when work falls behind schedule• Is strict about working safely when we are tired or stressed

Senior management -• Quickly corrects any safety hazard (even if it’s costly)• Considers safety when setting production speed and schedules

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Measurement example: Heavy Steel21 workgroups (Zohar & Stuewe, 2006)

Before-after; Group and Org. Climates

Group Safety Climates

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

4.50

5.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Department

Scor

e

1-GL 2-GL avg 1 avg2

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Climate predicts safety performance413 workgroups (Zohar & Luria, 2005)

Org.-level climate

Ave. Group climates

Operations’safety

0.41** 0.38**

0.44**

Strength

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A practical theory for Safety CultureWhere does climate come from?

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What is organizational culture?Schein’s 3-tier model

• Deep tier: Shared assumptions about world - human nature, work, management, safety (deeply buried)

e.g. Safety as injury; Safety as compliance (discipline)

• Surface tier: Wide range of visible expressions, or artifacts (easy to observe but difficult to interpret)

e.g. Many elaborate safety rules; Rule-based training

• Middle tier: Espoused values/beliefs, justify company goals & policies (but discrepancies create ambiguities)

e.g. Safety as no. 1 vs. Safety without disrupting efficiency

Yet, without metrics, culture remains unmanageable (current state of affairs)

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Leaders create cultureOperational framework

• Daily verbal exchanges between leader & members is a key source of social influence (concrete task issues)

• Symbolic content or sub-text, as perceived by the recipient, identifies deeper culture-shaping messages:

1. True priorities among competing goals, demands2. Formal policies vs. informal recognition (discrepancies)

3. Espoused vs. enacted values (openness vs. authority)

4. Words vs. actions (e.g. empowerment vs. control)

• Multilevel model: Senior leaders create org. culture; Group leaders create sub-cultures for each unit

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Improvement of org. culture - it is all about the metrics

Symbolic content (sub-text) of daily leaders’ exchanges offer an observable culture metric (% messages):

• Recipients as human detectors: use a tailored checklist of perceived sub-textual cultural messages

• Quality-control methods: use random sampling of exchanges (by consent; agreed sampling framework)

• Immediate analysis of each sampled exchange, using recipients as interpreters (3-min. process)

• Remote measurement: use cell-phone & internet to collect data, analyze it, and offer bi-weekly personal FB

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Measure culture with CEO messages (Marble Works)- Metrics reflect perceived leader messages

תועובש יפל תוינופלט תוחישב ולעש יפכ םירסמה זוחא -זעוב

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

היה ךיבגל רסמה -יבויח)ילילש תמועל(החוטב הלועפ לע היה שגדה, תקיודמ)הריהמ הלועפ תמועל( ךב ישיא ןומא תעבה)תמועלבקעמ ,ךירחא הרקב (יולג היה רסמה , רורב)תמועל םומע ,יעמשמ וד (

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Measure culture with lower level messages- Metrics reflect daily priorities by subordinates

תועובש יפל תוליעפ ימוחת תובישח לש םיעצוממII - זעוב

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

םידבוע לש תוחיטב ,תונוכמ,םיכילהתםישנא ןיב םואית ,תולועפ ןיב

םישנא חותיפ -הכרדה ,בושמ,קוזיח

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Meeting the safety culture challenge

Senior leader exchanges can change safety culture:

• Modify basic assumptions: from safety-as-injury to safety-as-(ongoing) reliability

• Reverse the priority/utility due to the high incentive power of frequent recognition/attention: Usafe>Uunsafe

• Leverage culture to improve safety climate as the key mediator of employee performance (coffee-filter model)

What gets measured, gets managed (culture & climate)

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Safety culture/climate model

Safety climate mediates org. culture and employees’behavior – it explains 22% of injuries (meta-analysis)

Implementation process

Actions & Discussions

Employees’perceptions: Climate

% Safe operations

Injury rateLost daysDisability

Environment design/ hazards

Management True Values: Culture

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Applications and interventions

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Intervention example: Oil refinerySafety exchanges & unsafe operations (%)

01020304050607080

1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41

Weeks

%

Supervisory InteractionsElectric workMovement in zones

Base-line Intervention Follow-up

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Steel CompanySafety exchanges & safety compliance (%)

T o ta l B -S h o p : D a ily S a fe ty E x c h a n g e s (D S E s ) v e rs u s S a fe O p e ra tio n s (h o u s e k e e p in g )

1 0

1 5

2 0

2 5

3 0

3 5

4 0

4 5

5 0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0

R e p o r ti n g W e e k

% S

afet

y Ex

chan

ges

4 0

4 5

5 0

5 5

6 0

6 5

7 0

7 5

8 0

% S

afe

Ope

ratio

ns

% S a fe t y E x c h a n g e s % S a fe O p e ra t io n s

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Intervention: Fiber-plasticsTwo years later

Adjust Frequency data (*10); Severity data (*100)

0102030405060708090

100

Injury FrequencyRate*

Injury SeverityRate*

% ReliableExchanges

% ReliableOperations

2002 2003 2004

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Conclusions

• Practical theory: safety climate and culture can be defined in a manner that reduces ambiguity

• Good measurement: use theory-based measurement scales as the key for research and applications

• Third age of safety: shifting from worker compliance to leaders’ daily practices

• Leaders create culture climate: any real change depends on the company’s senior leadership

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Thank You