Relative Culture Strength – A Key to Sustainable World-Class Safety Performance

Abstract

Abstract While workers in the oil and gas industry tend to work safely, in general, most enforcement mechanisms are compliance-based, often focusing on safe conditions rather than safe behaviours. As a result, the frequency of injuries and accidents remains static, with several incidences per year. By embracing a behaviour-based system, in which employees are trained to think consequentially and work safely, companies can cultivate a self-reinforcing safety culture that has the potential to make the goal of zero injuries and accidents a reality. Intrinsic to success is the ability to quantify and measure progress towards a sustainable safety culture, one that allows companies to chart progress and adapt strategies to ensure a positive outcome. To this point, DuPont initiated a survey in 1999 to determine why one plant site might have outstanding safety performance while another in the same business has poor performance. Though much qualitative analysis had been conducted on this issue, no quantitative analysis had been performed to validate the relationship between safety culture and safety performance. As such, the goal of this survey was to evaluate employees’ perceptions of their safety programme and identify behaviours, attitudes and other factors that have the potential to undermine a safety programme. Results from the survey were analyzed, specifically focusing on how the safety culture varied between organizations with poorer safety performance and those with excellent performance. The Total Recordable Injury Rate based on the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) model was used as the measure of safety performance. Using collected data, the value of Relative Culture Strength was determined to normalize question responses in reference to its benchmark poor and benchmark best values. Ultimately, the data showed a pronounced relationship between safety culture and safety performance, with leadership as a key variable. The number of injuries is inversely proportional to Relative Culture Strength. The development of this metric thus allows for the quantification of qualitative data pertaining to safety culture, making it possible to benchmark safety culture within a company, an industry and across industries. As such, the metric has proven an effective measure for assessing and catalyzing safety culture improvement. This paper will review the data provided by the Safety Perception Survey, sharing insights, trends and analysis pertaining to safety culture. Moreover, it will serve to assist managers in better understanding the utility of a safety culture, as well as its role in improving safety performance.