How can you align your plant operations risk assessment with your company's safety culture?

1 What is safety culture?

Safety culture is the collective attitude and commitment of your organization towards safety. It reflects how your leaders, managers, supervisors, and workers perceive, prioritize, and practice safety in their daily work. A positive safety culture means that everyone in your organization understands and values safety as a core business objective, and actively participates in promoting and improving safety performance. A negative safety culture means that safety is seen as a secondary or optional issue, and that people tend to ignore, avoid, or blame others for safety problems.

2 Why align risk assessment with safety culture?

Aligning your plant operations risk assessment with your company's safety culture is important for several reasons. First, it helps you to identify and address the human and organizational factors that may contribute to or reduce the risks in your plant. For example, you can assess how your leadership style, communication channels, training programs, reward systems, and reporting mechanisms affect the safety behavior and awareness of your workers. Second, it helps you to engage and empower your workers in the risk assessment process, and to foster a sense of ownership and responsibility for safety. For example, you can involve your workers in identifying hazards, evaluating risks, suggesting controls, and monitoring outcomes. Third, it helps you to align your risk assessment with your company's vision, mission, values, and goals for safety. For example, you can ensure that your risk assessment supports and reflects your company's safety policy, standards, and procedures, and that it aligns with your company's strategic and operational objectives.

3 How to align risk assessment with safety culture?

Aligning your plant operations risk assessment with your company's safety culture does not have a one-size-fits-all approach. However, some general steps to take include conducting a safety culture assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses, defining the desired safety culture, and aligning the risk assessment with this desired culture. This alignment process may involve using a risk assessment framework that is consistent with the company's safety culture model and principles, involving workers and other stakeholders, using results to inform and improve the safety management system, communicating findings to stakeholders, and regularly reviewing and updating the risk assessment. Doing so will help ensure that the risk assessment reflects and reinforces the desired safety culture and assists in achieving safety goals.