Total Safety Culture

Developing safety culture in an organisation requires manager’s special attention to two aspects such as

• Environmental factors like equipments, tools, machines, systems, workplace etc. and another
• People factors like abilities, job skills, attitudes and behaviour etc.

These factors have influence on safety culture in an organisation. Total safety culture is built-up on the premises that safety awareness at all levels of management including workers depend upon how organizational & human aspects are managed. In developing total safety culture, management policies, systems, procedures, equipment, machinery, material and such material resources are required to be considered. Similarly safety culture also depends upon psycho-social and economic factors of people working in the organisation. Total safety culture encompasses all these aspects which are diagrammatically shown below.

Safety Policy, Procedures, Rules & Regulations, Manufacturing & Management Systems & Techniques, Organisational set-up, Financial Position etc.

If people at workplace achieve desired output or results safely, it contributes positively to develop safety culture in an organization. Many companies are making efforts to develop safety culture by adopting traditional safety methods. The traditional methods, which are generally followed, are given below:

• Engineering revision;
• Instructions;
• Personnel adjustments; and
• Discipline

Engineering revision:

Guarding of machines and tools, isolation of hazards, revision of procedures and process, illumination, ventilation, colour and colour contrast, provision of personal protective devices, substitutions of safer tools, etc., replacement and repair, and a wide variety of similar steps of a mechanical or physical nature and eliminate most of the flaws in improper mechanical or physical environment.

Instructions:

Persuasions and appeal, training as well as instruction and reinstruction. Through the motivating characteristics of persons (shop psychology), visual as well as oral approaches, safety education and safety organization with all its many activities, an individual can be persuaded to act accordingly to the safety norms and eliminate the lack of knowledge of skill in an individual.

Personnel adjustment:

Selection and placement with regard to the requirements of the job and the physical and mental suitability of the worker, medical treatment and advice, can eliminate or adjust as far as physical unsuitability is concerned.

Discipline:

Mild admonishment, expression of disappointment, fair insistence, statement of past record, transfer to other work, and penalties (discipline of a penalty nature is a last resort, an indication of supervisory failure and should never be applied except in full accord with management policy), etc., are some of the actions to iron out indiscipline such as improper attitude, etc., among the workers.