How to Improve your Safety Culture Program

First Step: 14 points to Safety

1) Make Health, Safety, Environment (HSE) a part of each plant staff meeting as a standing item on the agenda.

2) Develop and distribute (display) a site HSE policy signed off by Plant management.

3) Initiate a Lost Time Injury and Illness review board to meet periodically and review each Lost Time Injury or serious Incident. Board to be chaired by the Plant Manager.

4) Each Line Manager/Supervisor should have HSE added as a formal Target that is part of the annual Performance Review Process and Development Plan. Suggested weight 10-15%.

5) Re-organize (wherever necessary) the HSE function to report directly to the Plant Manager and include in all staff meetings and functions.

6) Plant Manager and Line Managers participate in Safety (HSE) Tours or Inspections on a periodic basis to increase their role and visibility in HSE.

7) Plant Manager attends Safety Meetings on the shop floor by ‘dropping in’ on Monthly Safety or Environmental Meetings, listening and asking questions about HSE concerns.

8) Have HSE review and sign off on all capital projects and conduct a Risk Assessment on new processes and operations.

9) Use an HSE Perception Survey as a tool to gauge the ‘safety attitude’ and understanding of the employee plant population. Effective as a benchmarking tool and helps identify any weaknesses or gaps in the existing program.

10) Initiate a formal Supervisory Safety Training Program for all Line Supervisors, Team Leaders, and Managers. They need the tools and knowledge to run their own departmental HSE programs.

11) Reward excellent HSE performance. This could be individual, departmental or at plant level.

12) Introduce a formal Disciplinary Action Program for HSE violations/unsafe acts or reinforce the existing one.

13) Root Cause analysis to be performed on all significant accidents, incidents and near misses, with corrective actions documented and tracked to confirm implementation.

14) Have a Return to Work program in place.

Second Step: Leading Safety Indicators to reduce the Injury and Illness Rate 

Leading indicators are the performance drivers that communicate how outcome measures are to be achieved. They are needed to address a classic safety and health dilemma. Simply using trailing indicators creates a need for losses as a rationale for investing in safety and health programs.

Management Systems

• KPI – Walkthrough Inspection with a senior top manager on plant/facility (ideal: one tour per month)
• Basis of KPI: Organizations and individuals (e.g. GM, Site Manager) should be active and visible in promoting HSE performance and principles.

HSE Training

• KPI - HSE Training to be performed in Manufacturing, Warehouses and Offices
• Basis of KPI: The facility should systematically identify training needs for regular employees, temporary employees, contract personnel and contractors whose activities may impact HSE performance. The plant/facility should conduct training to assure compliance with regulations and HSE procedures.

HSE Standards

• KPI – Percentage of completed items on the agreed-upon date divided by number of recommendations completed at the date of the deadline
• Basis of KPI: Incident/Accident investigations, follow-up on corrective actions indicate the level and completeness of corrective actions and the dedication of line management to prevent the same type of incident from happening again or recurring.

Behavior-Based Safety

• KPI – Near Misses vs. actual incidents are reported (sugged ratio NM/actual incidents: 10 vs. 1)
• Basis of KPI: The essential element of worker health and safety is consistently performing safe work methods and following prescribed well designed safe work rules and procedures. Managing safety performance requires that we emphasize the importance of safe work behaviors and that processes are in place and effective in the identification of failures to follow safe work methods and procedures.

Additional indicators that can be added to previous main ones:

• Attitude (set up conditions, behavior)

• HSE employee perception survey – measure every two years

• Physical Conditions

• Health and Safety Self-Audit of the operation/site – measure four times a year

• Job Safety Analysis (JSAs) – measure twice a year

• Documenting Risk Assessment decisions – measure twice a year

• Behavior (action)

• HSE proposal/suggestions – measure four times a year

• Program Elements

• Development of a scheme to recognize outstanding Health and Safety contributions to plant/site – measure once per year

• Promotion of “off the job” Health and Safety activity – measure twice a year

• Wellness/Health awareness activities during the year – measure once a year

• Hosting/sponsoring Health & Safety Activities – measure once a year

• Health and Safety facility-wide celebration – measure four times a year

Third Step: Implementation of a Program with Observations

Planning 

Planning needs most of the time before a Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) system can be introduced. 

The BBS system will be developed, implemented, and guided by a working group consisting of employees who finally represent a diverse cross-section of the organization. 

One of the basic responsibilities of this group is to develop an at-risk behavior inventory. 

While the traditional safety programs focus on the technical aspects and engineering controls, BBS addresses human interfaces and adds an additional level of protection, by focusing on safe behavior of the individuals and how the technical and administrative controls are applied. 

All processes in scope need to be evaluated for their critical points and the safe behaviors/acts needed there. 

The evaluation will end up with a list of at-risk behaviors and the definition of safe behaviors needed for all work processes. 

The most important source for safety information about the processes is the existing workplace health risk assessments, which are the basis for the already existing safety programs. 

Additional information about at-risk behaviors can be drawn from the analyses of accident/incident reports which are available at plats. 

Direct observations will validate information extracted from historical sources and also reveal new at-risk behaviors that have not yet resulted in documented injury. 

Interviews are a good opportunity for employees to explain how they behave to perform their jobs safely. This information can be helpful to determine risks of not performing work in a behavioral safe manner.

Cheklist. Safe Behaviour Inventory

The outcome of the planning is a series of definitions and checklists to generate a safe behavior inventory through observation of the tasks performed. 

The checklists will also focus on the critical hazards and risky processes and should be practical, specific and concise. 

The definitions state the BBS in the different categories, the checklists are used to generate the data for managing the process. 

These checklists contain pertinent information on the process, variables on conditions present, behaviors at work grouped into categories and comments. 

Be aware of, while there are generic behaviors, most often the specific tasks ask for a more tailor-made observation card. 

The observation checklists should combine generic and specific observations.