Rank: Forum user 
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Hello poeple I would like to hear some views on the health and safety culture and how your company or you help implement this ,as I believe this is where it all starts for a site, depending on the culture it can really make or break a company as to how wll every one works together.
please give me your views on the health and safety culture in your company.
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Rank: Forum user
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I hold formal health and safety meetings with all our people. I run recognition schemes that reward people for health and safety performance. We have newsletters, suggestion boxes and I have an open door policy.
When people get it right I let them know what a good job they are doing for all of us.
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Rank: Guest
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Not easy to achieve. It can take years. Some good stuff in HSG65. My approach is simple:
1. Management commitment at all levels
2. Good knowledge and understanding of health and safety throughout the organisation - Training!
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Much has been written about a safety culture but in truth little is actually known. The link between unsafe and acts conditions and a safety culture is a tenuous one, albeit there no doubt one exists. Understanding your own company culture and a safety culture, they are inextricably linked, is the key to understanding what makes people tick. No doubt senior management commitment plays an important role in shaping the organisation's safety culture - but talk is cheap.
A safety climate survey is arguably the best method to identify the prevailing culture and to then implement actions arising from the survey. A re-visit sometime in the future will provide a benchmark with which to measure if there are any tangible differences in attitudes, perceptions and behaviours.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I take culture in this context to simply mean the “the way we do things around here, the shared understanding and beliefs of the group”. It is, then, self evident that a constructive, positive, knowledgeable, mutually supportive group will have the optimum impact on any matter.
However, what many organisations and safety practitioners come up against is a need to establish a more positive role for H&S within the existing company culture and that is a very complex matter to manage and achieve.
The mechanism of change is often described as requiring a leader skilled in the art of managing change in the workplace. One who can create an environment where employees choose to adopt the changes and adapt their behaviours. However, the leader of the change doesn’t need to be the ‘boss’. In fact many bosses are the worst choice to lead such change. Tacit approval or acceptance of the need for change from the ‘boss’ is all that is actually required to succeed.
The most common failures I have witnessed were those where the emphasis had been on changing behaviour at the coal face and ignoring the need to support others that also needed to change. For example, it is often the ‘middle’ managers who find it most difficult to adopt or adapt to the changes.
What is a successful safety culture? I am not sure there is a single answer to that. I prefer to say that if the employees work in a positive company culture then H&S will be, by default, managed positively. Good communication, positive listening, knowledge of the subject, involvement, understanding and accepting goals, mutual respect and support are all things that make a good safety culture.
And just to finish we have to remember that cultures are constantly changing. You better be sure to construct something that is able to constantly adapt or adopt even as you are constructing it.
P48
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Rank: Super forum user
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Quite a lot of reliable, valid research has been done on 'safety culture' (and 'psychological safety culture') in the last 30 years, and about the last 15 years in the UK. It's published in journals such as the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Safety Science, Journal of Organizational Behaviour and Journal of Applied Psychology.
The focus has enlarged from the 'cognitive ergonomics', implied in Ray Rapp's comment to safety leadership to foster 'mindfulness', a concept advocated by Andrew Hopkins.
Hopkins has some v. readable research free online at the ONS Centre of the Australian National University.
A report on the subject, by Sharon Clarke a safety psychologist at Manchester Business School, is avaiable free of charge in the research section on this website
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Rank: Super forum user 
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One key ingredient is leadership from the very top otherwise safety is not seen as important compared to productivity, sales etc. Dr Tim Marsh of compares a manager saying: Do it safely but do it by Friday with Do it by Friday but do it safely. My CEO says the latter and, boy, does it make my job so much easier though a lot busier!
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Rank: Super forum user
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There is a research report with a very useful model...can't remember it be it does reflect the leadership part being the key..
I would just like to add to the debate - what about the attitude of safety professionals? and how does that impact on the safety culture?
There are positive and negative characters out there - some frightened of putting their name on a document and others who just recite the regulations every time a manager asked what he should do.
Guess my point is it isn't just purely the operations guys that have an impact on the culture.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Rank: Forum user
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An open and honest environment where people can challenge anyone else freely, without the fear of feeling stupid or their views not being listened to.
It sometimes needs management to do a U turn on traditional thinking and recognise that front line staff have the skills to do the job, and, given the right encouragement, come up, and take ownership of the solutions.
Much more effective than some remote and hapless middle mgr/safety bod making a 'right spanner' of it!
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