Extending the empirical evidence for process safety climate

Abstract

Numerous incidents in the oil and gas and chemical processing industry have been attributed in part to a “poor safety culture”. Whereas previous research has largely focused on evaluating a general safety climate/culture with a greater emphasis on personal safety, this study examines the relationship between process safety climate and process safety incidents, after controlling for general safety climate. Survey data gathered in 2018 from over 700 employees in an oil and gas company in the Middle East were combined with organisational records of 275 personal and 940 process safety events at the department level across 12 calendar years (2009–2020). Despite general safety climate scores showing relationships within the survey consistent with previous research, general safety climate was not significantly related to organisational records of personal and process safety events at the department level. Positive relationships between process safety climate measured in 2018 and process safety events in three years before 2018 (2010, 2011, and 2013) substantiate previous findings that process safety climate can be a lagging indicator of workplace safety and evidence of organisational improvements made in between.