Canadian Occupational Safety

12 Canadian Occupational Safety | www.cos-mag.com Can you handle the truth? Perception surveys will reveal your real safety culture T he words "safety culture" are mainstays in safety discussions in corporations across the country, and the opinions and perceptions of what a safety culture is are as varied as the people within those organizations. I have heard "We have a great safety culture" from confident managers and witnessed declarations of "We have no safety culture" from front-line workers. What really caught my attention was when I heard both of those statements from within the same company. But, what exactly is safety culture? Some have described it as the "feel" you get about an organization. Does it feel safe when you work there? In my very early days as a safety profes- sional, I would get this sense about different parts of our organization. Some parts felt good, comfortable and safe, whereas others projected a sense of risk, discomfort and even doom. An examination of the safety statistics for those groups confirmed that the feel- ings were indeed accurate. As a rookie safety guy, my attempts at communicating these differences to the management of the company failed miserably. My feelings and intu- ition held little weight in a technical company where everything was mea- sured, analyzed, calculated, graphed and re-analyzed. Then I met Dan Petersen, the forefather of safety perception surveys. He had compiled 75 questions that were used to calculate scores on 20 categories of safety, including: safety attitude, communications, recogni- tion for performance, supervisor safety training, support for safety, safety cli- mate, management credibility and involvement of workers. Essentially, he was defining safety culture using 20 specific aspects of safety. This taught me that safety culture is not just a simple number or rating, but rather it is a complex array of multiple aspects — each of which must be understood and measured. The content of the questions asked and the context in which they are asked need to be well thought-out. A good survey tool will ensure an accurate assessment of the culture categories. We need a tool that helps define, measure, justify and communicate that feeling about safety in an organization. The tool must also be designed specifically as a safety assessment tool and not just an off-the-shelf management assess- ment tool that's adapted with some safety terminology. This approach for measuring safety culture is distinctly different from the approaches we use for auditing and assessing our safety programs. Our audits focus on what we are supposed to do versus what we are actually doing. A safety perception survey addresses the softer issues behind those and how the organization feels about them. Petersen's research identified that the 20 categories comprising safety culture had a far greater correlation to strong safety performance than many of the traditional items in audits. There are two options available to gather information about safety cul- ture: conducting interviews or using a survey tool. Interviews by a safety expert can be very effective as they allow the interviewer to explore issues in more detail as they are brought to light. The downside is that you need someone with expertise in the process and in conducting unbiased interviews, and it will take a lot of time and resources, even with a smaller sample size. The survey tool can be used to get a much greater sample size and compilation of the results will be far more simple. When it was time for our orga- nization to conduct that first safety perception survey, we decided on the process using a safety expert. We invited Petersen into our organization and he began interviewing individuals at vari- ous levels using these questions. He was adamant that he wanted to inter- view three distinct groups of people: front-line workers, supervisors and senior management. Petersen believed that a strong safety culture existed when the views of senior management, supervisors and front-line workers were consistent, and that a culture was weak when there was disparity between the views. He taught me that we need to understand where the perceptions of management and supervisors vary from the views of the workers. It will be normal in a survey to see the percep- tions of supervisors be about five per cent to 10 per cent more positive than those of workers and those of manage- ment to be about 10 per cent to 15 per cent higher. The real important infor- mation about your culture comes in those categories where the variances are significantly wider than that. It was at this point in my journey where I learned another valuable lesson: Management must be prepared for the results of the survey. A good survey will have some pretty tough questions such as "Have you been asked to overlook safety to get a job done?" and "Can workers under the influence of drugs or alcohol work undetected in your workplace?" and "Does management care about workers' safety?" I would always conduct a pre-sur- vey workshop with management to explore what they wanted to get from the survey and if they would be pre- pared to act on the results. Through that process, some managers would usually state they wanted to know the truth about safety in their organiza- tion, which inevitably would result in my best Jack Nicholson impression: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" It will be hard to accept some of the results, so it is imperative for the safety team to work closely with management to help them through some of these difficult truths and then be prepared to take action. An integral part of a safety culture assessment is the follow-up action plan. The resources to work on the action plan should be agreed upon before the survey and it should be developed as soon as possible after the results are compiled. Workers will have taken the time to provide you with their heartfelt truths about safety and they will be expecting to see action from that. Don't disappoint them by keeping it a secret. Safety culture is a complex phenom- enon, but it can be understood and measured. Understanding these key elements of a perception survey can help you find the truth about your safety culture and, yes, you will be able to handle it. Dave Fennell is an independent safety consultant and motivational speaker based in Cochrane, Alta. He is an expert in risk tolerance, human factors and behaviour-based safety. He can be reached at djfsafe1@telus.net or visit www.davefennellsafety.com for more information. DAVE FENNELL SAFETY CULTURE Announcement - Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals 2018-19 Executive Officers The Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals (BCRSP) is a federally incorporated self-regulating, self-governing, ISO 17024 accredited and ISO 9001 certified organization established in 1976. The Board governs its certificants in order that the public interest may be served and protected. Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals Conseil Canadien Des Professionnels En Sécurité Agréés In addition to the Executive Committee, the 2018-19 Governing Board includes newly elected Governors Mark Fernandes, MBA, CRSP, Marianne Matichuk, CRSP, CHSC, COHS, CNM, Dave Rebbitt, MBA, CRSP, CHSC, CET, CD and Sandra Stephens, LLB, LLM (Public Member), and returning Governors include Tareq Al-Zabet, PhD, CRSP, Robin Angel, BSc, MSc, CRSP, Paul Belair, MBA, CRSP, Dale Shafer, MBA, CRSP, and the Execu- tive Director is Nicola J. Wright, BA (Hons), CAE. Paul Andre, Board Past Chair, is President and CEO of Workplace Safety North (WSN) based out of North Bay, Ontario. Paul has held a number of senior posi- tions including Vice-President of Prevention Services for WSN and Senior Advisor to the Prevention Office of the Ministry of Labour. Paul holds a forestry technician and technologist diploma from Sir Sandford Fleming College and a certificate in Occupational Health and Safety from Ryerson University. Paul has been a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP) ® since 1996. David Johnston, Board Secretary-Treasurer, is an envi- ronmental, health and safety professional with over 35 years' experience. He is currently employed by Toronto Hydro as the Director, Environment, Health and Safety. David has worked throughout Canada and the United States in a variety of industries and is recognized for leading organizations to safety excellence. In addition, he is a tireless volunteer contributing to the advance- ment of safety and the profession through serving on multiple committees, associations and boards. In 2013, he was selected as Canada's Safety Leader of the Year. David has been a Canadian Registered Safety Profes- sional (CRSP) ® since 1999. Kevin Dawson, Board Chair, is currently the principal consultant at Omnius Consulting in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Prior to forming Omnius, he was the Manager, Safety & Health at Nalcor Energy. Kevin holds an B.Eng. (Mech) and a MBA from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Kevin is a member of the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) and has served as the CSSE Avalon Chapter Chair. He is also a past Chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Construction Safety Association. Kevin has been a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP) ® since 1998. www.bcrsp.ca info@bcrsp.ca Monica A. Szabo, Board Vice Chair, has over 25 years of experience in occupational hygiene, health and safety, and is a senior leader who has built a reputation for developing progressive and results-oriented health and safety solutions for the broader public sector. Monica is currently the Corporate Safety Manager at the WSIB and prior to that held the position of Executive Director at PSHSA. In addition to holding a CRSP, Monica is a Registered Occupational Hygienist (ROH), a Certified Occupational Health and Safety Technologist (OHST) and a Certified Municipal Manager (CMM III). Monica has been a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP) ® since 1993. BCRSP_NewExecutiveCommittee Announcement2018_COS Magazine.indd 1 2018-07-24 4:06:20 PM

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