Organizational Safety Culture Transformation through Coaching

Abstract

Organizational culture is simply known as 'the way we do things around here'. Culture is developed over time and evolves as people transit through the organization. It is an uphill task to transform organizational culture when this is not desirable. With regard to safety, it becomes even more important that the right mindset and behaviours are modelled across the organizational strata, as these are fundamental to keeping people, assets, and the environment safe. Personnel becomes wary of reporting incidents for fear of toppling the safety performance when the focus is placed on keeping safety track records. Another factor that contributes to underreporting is the attitude of the leaders while receiving 'bad news' of an incident. Excessive questioning, blame culture, and consequence management for failures create an environment of fear and inability to intervene in unsafe conditions.