Models Of Safety Culture

Safety Culture

Safety culture is a sub unit of organizational culture, which indicates safety performance of individual, job, and organization structures that affect and influence organization performance. (Cooper 2000). A lot of companies want to promote their safety culture and also many managers have started showing their interest in safety performance. Newest researchers found that the changing of safety culture and safety climate is really a matter of changing manger’s behavior.

Characteristics of Safety Culture

Employees observe and correct hazards in safety culture employees are able to observe and correct hazards. Once a hazard is identified, the correction is made and reported.

Correct personal protective equipment is damaged.

Because individual motivations are different, the process of filling a safety culture needs to address an array of motivations. Management will want to see the safety culture reduce the cost of insurance, and employees will want to feel safer and less prone to injuries.

Models of safety culture

The development of models of safety culture models started in the 1980s. Accident causation models identify the presence of an interactive or reciprocal relationship between psychological, situational and behavioral and organizational factors. (Heinrich 1980)

Bandura’s reciprocal model (1986) suggests a good framework for analyzing organizational safety culture which access internal factors (person) and external observable factors (situational and behavioral) in a dynamic environment.

Cooper developed a model reflect the concept of safety culture, that contains three dimensions:

Internal psychological factors (safety climate) external observable factors and organization factors .His model includes Zohar (1980) safety climate dimension and safety management system and behavioral dimensions.(cooper

Informed culture means the organization collects and analyses applicable data, and actively distributes safety information. A reporting culture means refining an atmosphere where people have confidence to report safety concerns without fear of fault. A learning culture means that an organization is able to learn from its mistakes and make changes. In a just culture errors and unsafe acts will not be punished if the error was unplanned. A flexible culture is one where the organization and the people in it are capable of adapting effectively to changing demands.

Geller (1997) found Total safety Culture model. The interactive relationships between person, environment and behavior were proposed in this model. Its estimates 10 core values for the total safety culture.

Another model called Safety Maturity Model (Fleming 2000) it includes some core components as follows: Management commitment communication productivity versus safety, safety recourses learning organization participation, shared perceptions about safety, trust, industrial relations and job satisfaction as well as training.

Safety Climate models Safety Culture