The impact of accidents on companies, employees and their families is substantial. Monumental strides have been made on the technical side of safety, but this has proven to be “not enough”. Behavioral safety has made significant headway in developing safety processes. Identifying, measuring and reinforcing safe behaviors has produced great results. However, before this can be done, there is a very important first step: identifying the “existing safety culture.” A facility’s culture directly impacts what happens in a facility and affects the safety performance of a company.
The culture of a facility is the center of a safety process. Major influences affecting the safety culture include: physical conditions, policies/regulations, behaviors–entire facility population and reinforcement–positive/negative. (See Figure 1)