Our thoughts on safety culture

While they cannot claim to be ultra-safe (Amalberti, 2008), large industrial facilities are governed by safety management systems that implement rules and operating procedures. In everyday language, ‘rules' refers to requirements regarding appropriate conduct in a particular situation. They extend beyond the scope of the company and lie at the heart of our society.

In many domains, rules do not express the wishes of those that are governed by them; they represent an order or an imposition. The domain of safety is no exception in this respect; on the contrary, here rules are particularly prescriptive. Non-compliance can lead to a dangerous situation, sometimes coupled with sanctions.

However, the increasing complexity of our organizations and the proliferation of rules can make compliance very expensive or even impossible. Furthermore, overly rigid (zero tolerance) enforcement can lead to non-compliance. The result is ‘automatic' actions that reflect short-term compliance rather than intelligent prevention behaviour (in the form of an integrated safety culture, for example).

The same questions keep coming up: Why do people break the rules? Why do they comply with them? How far should the rules go?

While there are many reasons why someone decides to break a rule, the fundamental element of compliance strategies is that it must make sense to the person who is expected to follow it. Without being exhaustive, here are some ideas to think about:

It is often the case that when we work with companies we hear statements such as "Oh, but here it's different, you can't compare us to somewhere else or expect to find the same practices here, it's our culture", in order to justify some safety practice or other. The ‘somewhere else' can include: the next valley, another region, another country or another continent.

Studies carried out on a global scale, such as the ‘Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness' project support this idea, grouping countries according to their cultural similarity. This criterion is identified as a determining factor in the effectiveness of organizational and behavioural leadership. One conclusion that is given can be summarized as, ‘When in Rome, do what the Romans do; if you're somewhere else, do what they do'.

ICSI has been asked to work with companies in many parts of the planet with different local cultures, and in turn can ask the question: to what extent is safety culture influenced by the country's culture?

Between 2008 and 2013, the Institute carried out a large-scale study of the factors that influence perceptions of beliefs and practices related to safety. We collected more than 21,000 questionnaires about perceptions of safety (21 entities in 4 continents in the oil, services, and gas transport and storage sectors). Three potential influential factors were tested: the sector of activity, the geographical area and the hierarchical level of respondents.

The study showed that the factor that has the most influence on perceptions in terms of safety culture is the sector of activity, which is well ahead of the geographical factor. In fact, the geographical factor takes third place after the hierarchical level. In other words, the ‘local' culture does impact safety culture but is not a major determinant in the sectors that were studied. The factor that has the most influence on perceptions of safety culture and practices is the sector of activity.

Yes, organizations that want to move to safer practices must take into account the local culture if they want to have a better understanding of the perceptions and practices of actors. However, they have other levers that can influence perceptions and practices at the entity itself, notably the organization that they put in place and the ‘culture' of the sector they are part of.

Managers are at the heart of forging safety culture and developing leadership is a key objective. Several observations confirm this fact:

In short, individual and collective mobilization must go hand-in-hand with the safety leadership provided by managers, understood as the ability to influence behaviour so that it becomes safer.

But the influence of managers does not stop there. Organizational safety culture is directly dependent on the level of managerial commitment to safety issues. This commitment is an essential component of an integrated safety culture. Several levers are available to managers: i) their own attitudes and behaviour, ii) direct action on individual or group behaviour, iii) indirect action through factors that promote safe behaviour, such as work situations or the organization.

Based on these arguments, seven general principles of safety leadership management have been identified by members of ICSI:

In conclusion, the commitment of managers and the leadership they provide helps to improve safety culture. They create the conditions for employees to contribute. They also translate and make trade-offs between the strategic priorities of their business on a daily basis. They have at their disposal a number of levers from the world of human and organizational factors, which are based on a few fundamental principles.

During field visits, a comment that our team frequently hears is, "it's the least experienced ones who have the most accidents".

This assertion is a belief; an ideological expression. In other words, something believed to be true, even if the facts or empirical evidence do not support it. Beliefs, commonly found in the fields of politics or religion, can also affect safety. Consequently, work in the domains of anthropology and sociology argues that in a business, the expression of beliefs is a defensive ideology used to counteract risks that arise when work is done ("good doctors don't make mistakes").

Scientific evidence shows that newly-hired workers, who are still learning the skills of their trade, have accidents. But beware! More experienced employees can also have accidents - some of them dramatic. In fact, very experienced operators are often involved in major catastrophes.

There are various reasons for these phenomena. The psychological "SRK" (skills, rules, knowledge) model developed by Jens Rasmussen provides a better understanding of the reason for this paradox. According to the model, experience gradually builds direct associations between problems and solutions that help in the efficient completion of tasks. Over time, an experienced worker builds up a kind of repertoire consisting of a large number of solutions in response to a wide variety of problems. How, then, can experts be wrong? Surprisingly, too much experience can lead to an accident. This happens, for example when experts automatically trigger a solution to a problem they have (wrongly) identified. As for inexperienced workers, errors and accidents are most often due to incomplete or incorrect knowledge. Errors can also arise from new or complicated situations that overwhelm their ability to respond, and where their lack of experience means that they do not have immediate solutions.

This model is supported by the risk management theory developed by René Amalberti. The author argues that the relationship between competence and undesired events takes the form of an inverted U: lack of knowledge can lead to accidents and too much knowledge can turn into the normalization of deviance, which can exceed system limits and lead to an accident.

Finally, beliefs have historical roots. Marcel Simard demonstrated that at one time in the history of industrialization, the only protection workers had against accidents was their own professionalism and experience. Although the socio-technical context has changed (notably with the development of safety management systems and close attention from mangers) this belief, called the "shop-floor" culture by ICSI is still, more-or-less present in organizations. A very strong shop-floor culture indicates that workers believe first and foremost in their own experience and expertise in order to manage risk.

Why was it a bad idea for Robinson Crusoe to play rugby ?

We all know the story of Robinson Crusoe. Now imagine he'd been on his desert island with his five best friends, partners in crime from his youth and fellow rugby players. Would he have behaved in the same way and adopted the same safety strategies as those described in the novel?

Rationality would suggest, "As long as Robinson is aware of the risks he'll always be cautious. He might only do stupid or dangerous things if he doesn't know about the risks or if he's foolish..."

However, behavioural sciences and the sociology of organizations tell us that it is not as straightforward and systematic as the advocates of "safety values" would like it to be.

Unfortunately, Robinson, because he wants to fit in with his friends who just want to have fun, goes diving beyond the reef to see the sharks. He joins in and throws himself off the top mountain as if it was a ski slope.

Heavily influenced by pressure from the group, he adopts risky behaviours that are inconsistent with what he would otherwise have done given his experience.

How to save the brave soldier Crusoe?

Fortunately for all of those who are HSE advocates, this influence can also work in everyone's favour! Rowdy revellers can become devout practitioners of risk-free leisure activities. In the interest of survival, they are able to become a member of an organisation and adopt behaviours that help to manage, as far as possible, risks that cannot be avoided.

We can save the "risk takers" in our companies by working to create groups whose practices, rituals and beliefs have a positive influence on each of its members at all times. Our efforts to create groups where there is a strong safety culture will also influence any newcomers.

Over time, this "organisational socialisation" will create a virtuous and constructive circle.

Safety culture is built through social relations between actors in an entity. The dynamics of these relationships allows "ways of thinking and acting" to become collective, in other words shared and accepted by a majority of the management and employees. However, if this change is measured at the organisational scale, it is a "personal and collective experience" and implies a profound transformation of values, norms and practices.

For this transition to be successful, management involvement is paramount. It should drive and sustain changes as they progress, through visible leadership and participatory practices. Managers are also expected to provide guidance on the anticipated changes or, at a minimum, provide a vision of safety culture.

This does not mean that employees and groups, including supervisors and local managers are simply the targets or recipients of the anticipated changes. Although there are many contradictory examples in the industry, it is impossible to imagine that a profound transformation at the level of grass-roots workers can simply be managed by a director or the HSE department. A programme to change safety culture is a company-wide project that requires the active involvement of all of the organisation's stakeholders, who must take ownership and execute it.

It is clear that the extent of the involvement of grass-roots workers varies as the project advances, and must be organised and led. It takes the form of consultation, the co-construction of the action plan, or even the delegation of actions and responsibilities for the programme's development.

Finally, knowing when and how to calibrate the right degree of involvement (supervisors and grass-roots workers) that is appropriate to the context, the phase of the programme and those concerned, itself calls for an evolution or change in management practices. These include listening, two-way communication, consultation, delegation and especially, positive feedback. These practices suggest a directive-participative leadership style (see the conviction from April 2014). This change in supervisory practices has to be managed and supported as new habits must be learned and cannot be decreed.

Humans have a very partial access to reality. We are limited by what our senses, our knowledge and experience allow us to grasp. A useful analogy for understanding the concept is the perception of the temperature of a room. If you ask the occupants to decide on the temperature, the answers will be different to the temperature indicated by a thermometer. Transposed to the field of risk, the concept of perception reflects the fact that the level of perceived risk varies from one person to another. Perceptions vary according to whether he or she has already experienced a similar event or not, the extent of their knowledge of risk factors, etc. Thus, risk taking has little to do with logical analysis but rather what individuals or groups perceive as the risks they face.

Perceptions are intrinsically valid: they express a form of reality that people hold to be true. However, a fundamental question is that of the homogeneity of perceptions within a group of people. For example, a typical question in the field of safety is the following: "On our site, do operators have the same ideas about following rules as managers?" Surveys  of perceptions therefore make sense, particularly before a company-wide programme is launched. They measure the convergence or divergence in the views of group members. The more divergent the views, the more work is needed to explain the differences and how to reduce them before commiting to the programme.

According to the principle of consistency, individuals spontaneously act in accordance with their perceptions. Therefore asking individuals about behaviours that are consistent with these perceptions is a route to success. Conversely, asking individuals to behave in ways that are inconsistent with their perceptions creates resistance. From this point of view, every programme that a company attempts to put in place and, in particular, any programme aimed at the development of a safety culture is a change that will engender both support and resistance to varying degrees. We can imagine a program that aims to eradicate the macho culture found on building sites. Such a programme may run into opposition from teams on the ground that have established initiation rites for young recruits. Conversely, the same program would meet less resistance from operators who are unfamiliar with the practice, or do not understand its social usefulness.

A programme to develop safety culture that begins without this knowledge of perceptions is exposed to unknown difficulties. It could be compared to a hiker who sets out blindly for a long walk, without knowing the summits they may need to climb in the following days.

In many sectors accident rates and seriousness are the main indicators of safety performance.

Moreover, they are one, if not the point of reference used by companies in a sector to compare their safety performance and set more ambitious targets.

However, a lingering belief persists.

It is usually assumed that the probability of a major industrial accident is low when the accident rate is low.

The illusory correlation between a low rate of workplace accidents and a low probability of a major accident is all the more common in companies and sectors where occupational safety is managed by the same entity that is responsible for safety related to major risks, or when safety management systems give priority to occupational safety indicators. This is regularly seen in the hijacking of a widely-known model: Bird's pyramid.

Although the model and the numbers that compose it give an impression of clarity, it must be used with great care. Here we note two significant limitations in its use when applied to major accidents:

One final point makes it possible to reject the idea of a link between work-related accidentology and major accidents. There are companies that, despite a very low or zero accident rate, have nevertheless experienced major accidents. A well-documented case is that of BP, in particular the explosion at the Texas City refinery in 2005 and the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in 2010.

Drawing parallels between occupational accidents and major accidents must therefore be done very cautiously. Some causes are shared by both types of events. However, significant differences in their nature and aetiology means that performance indicators of occupational accidents do not tell us anything about the possible occurrence of a major industrial accident. To think otherwise is a major error in risk management.

This does not mean that there is no human error involved in major disasters or simply in our daily lives! Rather, it means that operators are more often the victims of system defects rather than the main instigators of accidents. The error in question here refers to cases where a planned sequence of activities does not reach the desired ends, in the absence of chance or unexpected occurences. [3]

If we view human error as a result, it is another way to improve the reliability of socio-technical systems, and their design throughout their lifespan. It improves human reliability by controlling the operational conditions of operators. It also makes it possible to focus on facilities and equipment, the organisation and whether resources are consistent with any safety objectives that have been set.

When human error is seen as a consequence, event analyses see the identification of errors as the beginning of the investigation! It becomes a search for the constraints that led to the occurrence of inappropriate actions or deviations from good practice. This in-depth appraoch requires an iterative understanding, turning the question over many times. In deciding to learn from the root causes of an event rather than its consequences, corrective actions can more effectively prevent the occurrence or recurrence of similar events [1].

This belief encourages us to examine in greater depth our working environment in order to create the conditions for risk management.

The belief that departing from procedure leads to accidents is widespread in all sectors of industrial activity. This belief is based on the idea that procedures are exhaustive and all that need to be done is to follow them to carry out a task.

However, this comprehensiveness is not a given. Work is often made up of complex tasks that are carried out in a changing environment under time constraints. In these conditions, the number of parameters at play in the workplace and the combinations makes it impossible to identify all aspects of an activity in a useful document.

The reality of work is that procedures are almost always adapted in situ by operators. These are the people who find inconsistencies, lack of detail and problems in application. These invisible and silent adjustments make it possible for all at-risk socio-technical systems to function.

Consquently, these daily adjustments, that we call 'departures' make it possible to carry out the expected work. In practice, very few of them lead to safety breaches.

Industrial safety assumes a ongoing relationship between prescriptive "directives" set down by management (regulated safety) and "participation", i.e. taking into account the knowledge of workers in the field about local realitites (managed safety). The participatory aspect is absolutely essential. The involvement of the workforce is the condition by which they perceive that their daily contribution is acknowledged, and what they use to maintain a high level of vigilance and safe behaviour.

Thus promoting proactive behaviour encourages staff to participate in safety policy. It aims not only to promote the applicability of policy, but also helps to increase ownership by the workforce with the aim of improving the management of activities.