Safety Culture As Imagined versus Safety Culture As Done

As I approached the end of the first week of my North American tour, I reflected with Jeffery Lyth on the lessons learned from engaging with more than 200 leaders and 50 HOP Champions from a range of high-risk industries. Some of the themes were what safety culture looks like with HOP and the role of leadership in creating it. I heard stories of organizations engaging "HOP Experts" to assist the organization in this. The approach was to undertake a safety culture assessment by sending in teams of people to conduct interviews and create some form of baseline assessment and evaluation. I was taken aback by this traditional approach. In March 2021, I wrote an article for the Safety Differently Forum titled "Drift Towards Failure – Embedding Safety Differently Without A Different Approach." where we should be taking different approaches to understanding people, organizations, and systems better. Was the purpose of measuring culture, giving it a label, and then comparing, I assume, if the culture has changed? I was further perplexed by the belief that leaders believe they create the culture.

During discussions with Jeffery Lyth we talked about the work of Edgar Schein with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), titled "Safety Culture in Nuclear Installations (Guidance for use in the enhancement of safety culture)", published in 2002. The guidance described the three stages of development of a safety as;

1. Safety is based on rules and regulations
2. Safety is considered an organizational goal
3. Safety can always be improved

It described the visible characteristics as;

It also explored the role of Leadership, which was seen as being able to influence safety culture (not create it). Leaders being involved is one of the more important practices, as most workers will judge what is important in an organization by the words and behavior of leaders. Supporting this included;

• Gaining an understanding of safety culture as a concept.
• Being visibly interested in safety and integrating it into their other activities.
• Encouraging workers to have a questioning attitude on safety (being curious).
• Safety is included in planning activities.
• Regular reviews to ensure its adequacy for current and future circumstances.
• Monitor trends to ensure that objectives are being achieved.
• Recognize those who improve safety.

It also explored that the current state can be evaluated by asking twelve simple questions of those who do the work to determine what they called "workplace strength." The questions are;

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the material and equipment that I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for my work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my organization make me feel that my work is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?
12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

It also had a section regarding the importance of Psychological safety when influencing a change in culture. It highlighted the difficulties of undergoing transformational change and identified eight important conditions that need to be present. It warned that most transformational change programmes fail.

The eight conditions were:

1. Provide a compelling positive vision so that workers believe that they and the organization will be better off if they adopt the new way of thinking and working. Leaders must be committed to the vision and communicate it to others.
2. Give workers formal training in the new ways of thinking and working.
3. Involve workers in designing their own optimal learning processes, thus recognizing that everyone learns slightly differently.
4. Provide opportunities to practice the new ways and give feedback so that people can make mistakes and learn from them without disrupting the organization.
5. Give informal training to groups to build new norms and assumptions collectively. A person should not feel deviant in engaging in the new learning.
6. Provide positive role models so that people can see the new behavior and attitudes in others with whom they can identify.
7. Form support groups so that problems associated with the new learning can be discussed and so that people can speak openly about difficulties with others who may be experiencing similar difficulties.
8. Ensure that systems and structures, such as reward and discipline systems, are consistent with the new way of thinking.

It summarized some important learnings and realities about trying to change safety culture. Some of the key ones were;

• Culture is a product of social learning. Ways of thinking and behaving that are shared, work, and are valued become the elements of culture.
• You facilitate a change in the culture rather than creating a new culture. You can't demand a change or a different way of thinking and working.
• Cultural change for leaders and those who exert control is difficult because you have to unlearn something before you can learn something new. It is the unlearning that causes anxiety and resistance to change, which is called “survival anxiety.” The realization of what may be involved in learning something new causes “learning anxiety.” Therefore, for change to occur, survival anxiety must be greater than learning anxiety. This is best achieved by lowering learning anxiety and creating psychological safety for the learner.
• Never start by thinking about changing culture. Always start by examining the organization's issues. Only when these issues are clear should you ask yourself whether the culture aids or hinders their resolution.
• Always think initially of the current culture as your source of strength. If change needs to be made, try to build on existing cultural strengths rather than concentrating on changing elements that may be weaknesses.
• Learning about culture requires effort. You have to enlarge your perception and examine your own thought processes. You have to accept that there are other ways to think and do things.

In closing, decades of work and guidance have shaped the industry in which the HOP principles were developed. It is important to be able to describe the culture you want. Start with the basics of evolving your safety from roles and goals-based to improvement-based.

Using HOP Principles will guide you in influencing your safety culture. Our tools and frameworks, like Learnings Teams, the 4Ds, and LEGO Role Play, will shift you into improvement-based safety.

If you really want consultants or HOP experts to "take your watch and tell you the time", then ask the hard questions about providing evidence of the "how and the when", rather than the "what and the why."

Building HOP Fluency and Advocacy across the organization may be how you start. It is the small incremental change, "Trojan Mouse," and sharing those learnings is essential for the integration and sustainability of HOP.

We will share more of our HOP sustainability approach in the coming months. Our strategy is quite simple;

Do Safety With People, Not to them or for them.

Our body of work, including the 4Ds? and HOP Into Action?, HOP Beginners Guide To Doing Safety Differently series, are trademarked and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.