tmsconsulting.com.au Brisbane Sydney Perth Optimise Your Planning, People & Performance IDENTIFYING THE LEVERS TO EMBED SAFETY CULTURE WITHIN THE AUSTRALIAN WATER INDUSTRY Presented by Heather Ikin, Consultant Psychologist Australian Water Association North QLD Regional Conference 2013 13 August, 2013
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Identifying the levers to embed safety culture within the Australian Water Industry
Presented at the Australia Water Association North Queensland Regional Conference 2013 by Heather Ikin, Consultant Psychologist at TMS Consulting.
Safety at work is everybody’s business, but instilling a culture of responsible safety behaviour can be challenging in the Australian Water Industry. Too often, organisations rely on the existence of a safety management system (SMS) to provide a safe workplace. Managers become frustrated that ‘the system’ has not prevented incidents occurring, but rarely look at the role they play in creating a safety culture that brings the SMS alive. A proactive safety culture is vital to the continuing success of an SMS - it gives the dynamic energy needed to ensure that the system will provide a cycle of continuous improvement.
However, in attempting to create a proactive safety culture, the majority of organisations in the water industry make the mistake of only focussing on safety behaviours. It is not just behaviours that need to change, but more importantly mindsets.
This paper outlines how mindsets are the thoughts that drive actions, and behaviours are simply the actions that people display. Mindsets and behaviours underpin all successful change; without them, change is unlikely to be successful. Leaders must engage mindsets by developing compelling, and meaningful messaging (commonly known as a ‘change story’) in order to align the organisation to achieve step change in the safety culture.
This paper explores the concept of safety culture, and outlines how organisations must determine the maturity of their safety culture by identifying strengths and weaknesses, which can be achieved through conducting a gap analysis. Of most importance, this paper provides practical tips and a structured framework on how it can be improved within the Australian Water industry. The framework is based on seven key levers that must be used to embedding lasting change and drive a high performing culture. These include:
1. Leadership 2. Organisational Design 3. Performance Management 4. Communication 5. Reward and Recognition 6. Reporting 7. Learning and Development
In order to develop a high performing safety culture, the hearts and minds of employees must be engaged. Each individual must ‘own’ the culture, and understand the inherent need to change to be more focused on safety. In turn, this must translate into an organisation wide desire to achieve a high performing safety culture.
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tmsconsulting.com.auBrisbane Sydney PerthOptimise Your Planning, People & Performance
IDENTIFYING THE LEVERS TO EMBED SAFETY CULTURE WITHIN THE AUSTRALIAN WATER INDUSTRY Presented by Heather Ikin, Consultant Psychologist
Australian Water Association North QLD Regional Conference 2013
Failing to address safety culture may lead to an eventual plateau in safety performance
Investment into greater protection for workers and engineering a safer work environment does not guarantee any improvement to safety performance in the absence of improvement to safety culture.
+ Embedding safety culture requires leverage touch points throughout the organisation
+ The process involves reinforcing safe attitudes and behaviours, and celebrating achievements (e.g. reductions in safety incidents, increased rates of risk assessment completion)
+ It involves integrating all aspects of the organisational environment and system (both the tangible and non-tangible elements)
1. We seem to apply the same health and safety sledge hammer to everything we do, including even a paper cut. It seems that workers are consequently becoming disengaged, think health and safety is a joke, and have the attitude I'm just not going to do it. How do we get the balance right between focusing on rare but significant events and the day-to-day 'paper cuts'?
2. Following on from the first question, what's your thoughts on the usefulness of statistics being that we are capturing data on everything from very serious to very minor incidents? Are they that useful to track?