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IDENTIFYING THE LEVERS TO EMBED SAFETY CULTURE WITHIN THE AUSTRALIAN WATER INDUSTRY Presented by Heather Ikin, Consultant Psychologist

Australian Water Association North QLD Regional Conference 2013

13 August, 2013

© 2013 TMS Consulting

What is Safety Culture?

Shared values (what is important) and beliefs (how things work) that interact with

an organisation's structures and control systems to produce behavioural norms (the

way we do things around here).

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Why it’s important

Time

Safe

ty P

erfo

rman

ce

Failing to address safety culture may lead to an eventual plateau in safety performance

Investment into greater protection for workers and engineering a safer work environment does not guarantee any improvement to safety performance in the absence of improvement to safety culture.

(Feng, 2013)

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Top Down versus Bottom Up

Senior Executives

Middle Management

Frontline

Top Down+ Communicate the vision+ Establish safety priorities+ Ensure the implementation of

appropriate regulations, policies, procedures and practices

Bottom Up+ Change individual safety attitudes+ Acknowledge the employee as

expert+ Use mechanisms for upwards

feedback and communication

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Understanding Individual Safety Behaviours

Person

BehaviourSituation

Cooper, 2000

© 2013 TMS Consulting

BEHAVIOURS

EMOTIONS

THOUGHTS

Likely to be defiant and avoid completing

assessments, particularly if perceived to be time

poor

Disinterested, apathetic, frustrated, resentful and

cynical

Risk assessments are a waste of time; they are

just a way for the organisation to cover

themselves

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Understanding Individual Safety Behaviours

+ Organisational expectations versus individual limitations in safety behaviour

+ Gaining worker commitment to safety is critical+ Safety needs to be personally relevant and

meaningful+ Safety needs to be seen as

an investment rather than a cost

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Influencing Safety Behaviours

+ Engaging hearts and minds – does it need to be that “fluffy”?

Powerful Questions are key!

If you were seriously injured in a workplace incident, what would

you miss the most?

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Creating a Change Story

+ What’s in it for me?

+ Why do we need to focus on safety culture?

+ Are we capable of doing it?

+ Who is supporting this?

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Embedding Safe Work Behaviours

+ Embedding safety culture requires leverage touch points throughout the organisation

+ The process involves reinforcing safe attitudes and behaviours, and celebrating achievements (e.g. reductions in safety incidents, increased rates of risk assessment completion)

+ It involves integrating all aspects of the organisational environment and system (both the tangible and non-tangible elements)

© 2013 TMS Consulting

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Practical Advice for Safety Culture Change

+ Undertake a gap analysis

+ Conduct safety climate surveys

+ Conduct in-field coaching

+ Hold safety symposiums

+ Implement whole of organisation engagement strategies

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Questions

1. We seem to apply the same health and safety sledge hammer to everything we do, including even a paper cut. It seems that workers are consequently becoming disengaged, think health and safety is a joke, and have the attitude I'm just not going to do it. How do we get the balance right between focusing on rare but significant events and the day-to-day 'paper cuts'?

© 2013 TMS Consulting

Questions

2. Following on from the first question, what's your thoughts on the usefulness of statistics being that we are capturing data on everything from very serious to very minor incidents? Are they that useful to track?

© 2013 TMS Consulting

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Brisbane Sydney Perth

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