IOSH 09 speaker Alwyn Bithell shares the learning and challenges involved in dealing with safety culture at Airbus UK1 and the company’s subsequent efforts to change at a time when other business pressures are significant.
Most manufacturing companies in the UK recognise the importance of good safety as a part of an overall business strategy. They can see and understand management systems and all they encompass: the bread and butter of policy, procedures, risk assessments and safe operating procedures, and regular reviews of performance are all quite visible and tangible.
However, even when all these building blocks are in place there is still room for improvement, and often the harder you try the less the improvement, and so the belief grows that failures have to exist.
Something that safety professionals hear and read a lot about is safety culture, and how it may contribute to performance improvement. The term ‘safety culture’ can refer to behavioural aspects — ‘what people do’ — and situational aspects — ‘what the organisation has’. ‘Safety climate’ should be used to refer to psychological characteristics of employees — ‘how people feel’ — corresponding to the values, attitudes and perceptions of employees with regard to safety within an organisation.
My own preferred description of safety culture is what people do and how they feel when the ‘organisation’ is not standing over them and they are allowed to work as individuals.
Whether by a specialist survey or other means, the culture of an organisation needs to be exposed by diving deep into all levels of the team, and taking views as to why beliefs exist and where they are most prevalent. Opportunist complaints aside, a picture can quickly emerge, which indicates clear themes and frustrations manifested in the way people treat each other. This, in turn, can lead to a limited interest in safety improvements: “Why should I bother — no one else seems to!”
Once it is clear that there is an embedded culture, the next step is to convince the non-professionals that it exists — without those around us seeing it, we cannot make any change. This can be quite difficult as it is akin to getting people to look in a magnified mirror, and nobody likes to see their faults.
For practitioners, too, to be told there are areas for improvement can be a bitter pill to swallow, when we think we are doing very well, with lots of good systems for communication, and we have clear understanding of what needs to be done — and done safely.
The road to change
The hard work starts by trying to decide what is the best thing to do to really make a difference, as, in many circumstances, it feels like you are already doing what is considered best practice. Everyone involved goes through emotional change, where blame can breed before the mirror placed before you starts to become clear as you cross-check findings that, at first, seemed impossible, or which could be explained away by some other clear reasoning.
As in most safety improvement endeavours, a key requisite for building a positive safety culture is strong leadership of the correct type. Senior managers have strong influencing powers and can set the ‘tone’ for the company as a whole. They need to give safety a high priority in every aspect of their work, and must visibly and repeatedly demonstrate their commitment to safety through all areas of the organisation.
Leaders of people should openly and regularly discuss any health and safety concerns as part of regular conversations. This can sometimes feel awkward for those with limited knowledge of specific risks but this whole process is about learning from each other during face-to-face discussions. Such an informal and regular approach is far preferable to ad-hoc ‘state visits’.
When employees can see senior staff following and consistently maintaining safe practices, they start to follow their lead as an expected method of performance. Line managers should not assume that by turning a blind eye to unsafe acts they are somehow being ‘motivational’ by not giving their staff a hard time. Staff will soon start to feel like they can work unsafely, with little chance of ever being challenged.
Staff must be involved is as many decisions relating to safety as possible. When staff are not at least informed they start to build their own perceptions of what is happening and, more importantly, what is not happening. Very often, there are initiatives that are underway but are not well publicised, which can lead to the impression that “nothing ever gets done”. Also, most employees will have their own improvement ideas but quickly become frustrated that they can’t tackle them, or don’t feel supported to take them forward.
Hugely important to staff is the knowledge that, if they raise a health and safety concern, the company will take it seriously and provide feedback on what they are doing about it. People must feel that they can stop a job if they think it is unsafe without worrying about being disciplined or penalised.
Simplifying procedures and safe systems is also crucial to ensuring the message is transmitted, and that it sticks. Complicated procedures and systems of work may impress external auditors and agencies, we think, but are they understood by the people who need them — the operational staff? Investigations of safety incidents very often reveal that “procedures were not followed”, but the question is — why not? Guidance must be developed with those who actually undertake the task so that it is clear to, and understood by, the end user and reflects real practice.
Conclusion
There is only one way to really change the culture of any organisation and that is by making the changes together. The fact that things are not working as well as they could needs a cautious respect from all levels in the business involved. The many groups within the team have to find ways of working closer to resolve concerns while, at the same time, everyone in the organisation must also take personal responsibility for making change and improvement within their own sphere of influence.
Deciding what you might want to do to make a change in your organisation’s safety culture is difficult, and you may need help with it, but whatever you decide you must adopt a holistic approach, with total team commitment and involvement. Most safety culture issues are simple fixes and don’t cost the earth; it’s just a case of deciding how you will modify your behaviours and those of the team, being consistent in your approach, and reaping the rewards in the long term.
Reference
1 For the past three years, Airbus UK has been working with the HSE in an Intervention — Partnership Plan as part of the Executive’s Field Operations Intervention Strategy. The latter stages of the plan involved a culture survey, which was conducted on the company’s 6000-employee site by a HSE team. They sampled an element of the workforce and, through careful analysis, provided clear guidance on what weaknesses existed in the culture of the site.
Alwyn Bithell will be speaking on this subject at the IOSH Conference on 17 March at 15.10.
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