A Solution to Measure (and Improve) Safety Culture
Finding and fixing is the measurable heart of safety culture improvement.
By John Easton Apr 01, 2011
Safety culture is a hot topic for many of today’s organizations. A positive safety culture
helps organizations achieve their ultimate goal of achieving better safety performance
However, the process of understanding and improving a safety culture can be daunting. It
is not uncommon for a company’s leadership to look at their safety culture and ask:
Do we have a good safety culture?
How do we improve it?
How do we measure it?
These questions can be difficult and elusive to answer because, like any culture, safety
culture is built around many factors, including attitudes, accountability, leadership, and
other “soft” components that cannot be easily measured. However, it is also strongly
defined by another, more measurable factor: finding and fixing problems. By focusing on
this key element, organizations can gain meaningful insight into the health of their safety
culture. Why? Because when you measure your finding and fixing performance, establish
accountability, and take action on findings, you are demonstrating commitment to
providing a safe workplace. This in turn leads to positive employee attitudes toward safety
and a healthier safety culture.
How a Single, Automated Database Improves Finding and Fixing
Finding and fixing is not complicated. It is identifying problems or hazards and then
figuring out a way to fix them. The best way to do this is by tracking the right data
efficiently, which is best achieved by using an automated safety data management system.
Many organizations, however, still employ any number of systems to track finding and
fixing activities. These could include paper files, spreadsheets, home-grown databases,
and other potentially cumbersome systems. When data is stored in such a disparate
manner, it is difficult to obtain the “big picture” needed to assess progress. While
management may feel as if it is promoting a positive safety culture within an organization,
the inability to effectively manage findings can have a detrimental impact on an
organization’s safety culture.
The data management system you utilize should allow for efficient data entry, seamless
workflows, configuration that can align and change with your business processes, and
strong reporting capabilities that will allow you to extract and analyse information as
needed. Such a system will prove to be an invaluable tool for effectively managing safety
data, and thus, enhancing your safety culture. (Some organizations choose to build such a
database in-house but these projects can often become delayed, cumbersome, and
draining on resources. An off-the-shelf system is usually a much more efficient solution.)
Let’s evaluate the ways in which an automated safety system can be leveraged to support
the main components of good finding and fixing. These components are:
Understanding the Healthy Balance
Standardizing an Effective Hazard Identification and Correction Process
Effectively Prioritizing Actions Based on Risk
Understanding the Healthy Balance
It is important for an organization to balance its tendency to find problems with its ability
to fix them. If the scales tip too much one way or the other, the effect can be detrimental
to the company’s safety culture. By placing too much emphasis on finding problems, and
not having the appropriate resources to fix them quickly and effectively, an organization
will likely find itself with an apathetic and disengaged workforce. In such environments, it’s
not uncommon to hear workers say “Why suggest that safety enhancement, nobody will
ever fix it” or “It takes forever to get anything fixed around here.” Each time a negative
statement like this is uttered, the safety culture foundation suffers another crack.
On the other hand, not placing enough emphasis on finding hazards can also tip the
scales. You may be familiar with the saying, “If we have no problems, then we have a
problem.” An organization needs standardized programs and systems to identify hazards in
the workplace and then subsequently mitigate them. Solving problems is the essence of
improvement. Furthermore, if employees see action being taken on problems they’ve
identified, they will feel engaged and confident about their company’s dedication to worker
safety and will be encouraged to continue actively participating.
To understand what the balance is at your organization, it comes down to having reliable
information on your inputs and outputs. By using a single, automated safety data
management system, you’ll easily be able to extract information that will tell you how
healthy your balance is. Some key metrics you can use to track your finding and fixing
balance are:
Inputs:
Number of items found at each risk level
Number of audits performed vs. targets
Number of audits by area, auditor, and/or topic
Number of safety observations
Outputs:
How long items took to fix
Number of open/overdue corrective actions
Number of open/overdue corrective actions by area
Total number of safety corrective actions by area, time range, etc.
Standardizing an Effective Hazard Identification and Correction Process
Most large organizations use various methods to identify hazards, including incident
investigations, audits, inspections, and suggestion programs. However, the data collected
is often stored in different places and formats, which leads to poor data integrity and
inconsistent business processes being used by your OHS team.
With one automated safety data management system, organizations can streamline and
standardize workflows and data collection. As a result, you’ll be able to extract better
information and make more informed business decisions. Here are some of the benefits of
using an automated safety system for your hazard identification process:
Standardize the collection, storage, and retrieval of hazard information
Allow employees to anonymously report incidents from stand-alone stations placed
throughout the workplace to kick start the incident investigation process in the main
database
Conduct causal analysis of the hazard so preventative or system-wide actions can be
considered along with more immediate corrective actions
Automate e-mail notifications to ensure responsible individuals and departments are
aware of their assigned actions and the corresponding completion status
Generate reports to monitor completion statuses and ensure fixes don’t fall through the
cracks
Effectively Prioritizing Actions Based on Risk
No organization has the resources to fix all of its hazards immediately. The key to good
risk management, then, lies in prioritizing actions based on risk and allocating resources
accordingly. But how do you identify risk priority if your data is being tracked in various
places and formats? It likely takes hours, even days, to organize the information that will
tell you what actions to take and when.
Using an automated safety system, hazards can be easily prioritized to ensure resources
are used to fix highest risks first. You’ll be able to generate reports that feed into your
own standard reporting methods, making it easy for you to communicate risk information
to your team. Whether you use bulletin boards, structured weekly meetings, company
dashboards, etc., you’ll be able to effectively share information that will help your
company prioritize risk. With a good automated system, you’ll be able to:
Compare all data at once, within one system, instead of comparing inputs that come
from across different systems and formats
Sort and group risks as needed in order to identify and list risks by area, department,
time frame, hazard type, etc.
Use a dashboard to highlight the reports that are important for your specific business –
an effective reminder that keeps priorities front and center. The dashboard can be
configured to pop-up every time you log-in to the system.
The Bottom Line
Organizations will always be talking about safety culture and how to improve it. As we
have established, however, understanding the state of your safety culture is not the
unattainable “white elephant” it is perceived to be. Through a well-organized approach to
finding and fixing, facilitated by an automated safety data management system, an
organization can effectively set targets for safety performance and monitor progress. This
will go a long way towards promoting a healthy safety culture. Your automated system will
help you improve finding and fixing and will give you the tools you need to make informed
business decisions. Your safety culture will be all the richer for it!
About the Author
John Easton is a CRSP and MHSc (Industrial Hygiene). He currently works as the Safety
Product Manager at Medgate Inc., a leading provider of integrated Health and Safety
Software Solutions. He previously worked for 12 years at Toyota in various Health &
Safety roles including Industrial Hygienist, Safety Specialist, Project Lead for Toyota Safety
Management System, and Assistant Manager. He can be contacted at
jeaston@medgate.com or 519-304-3471.
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