Assessing safety culture in an organizational context

Many organizations depend on human performance to avoid adverse incidents ranging from costly employee injury rates to significant penalties for inadequate environmental performance to widespread damage or loss of human life. Without an effective organizational safety culture, a safe working environment is impossible. This paper describes a method that provides an objective and quantitative measurement of organizational processes deemed to impact overall safety performance. The effectiveness of this method has been demonstrated in organizations representing industries as diverse as nuclear power, research, mining, health care, and chemical reprocessing. Generic results from the use of the methodology are presented, with particular emphasis placed on those attributes of organizational functioning that most effectively discriminate between facilities and are related to overall safety performance.