The role of safety culture in safety
performance measurement
Pedro M. Arezes and A. SeÂrgio Miguel
Pedro Arezes is Assistant
Professor at the Human
Engineering Group in School of
Engineering of University of
Minho in Portugal. He holds a
PhD in Production Engineering
and is author of about 30
journal papers and international
conference proceedings. He is
involved in several research
projects in the Ergonomics and
Health and Safety domain.
E-mail: parezes@dps.uminho.pt
A. SeÂrgio Miguel is an invited
Full Professor of Industrial
Health and Safety at the Human
Engineering Group of the
University of Minho in Portugal.
He has authored more than 100
scienti®c papers in international
journals and proceedings. He is
a member of the editorial board
of two international journals in
the Health and Safety domain
and leader of several projects in
this area. He is also an industry
consultant and, presently, the
President of the North Section
of the Portuguese Engineers
Association (OE). E-mail:
asmiguel@dps.uminho.pt
PAGE 20
|
Abstract The emergence of implementation and certi®cation of structured management systems,
such as the occupational health and safety management system, implies that companies
should be able to measure the results and achievements from such implementation. This paper
focuses on the description and comparison of the traditional indicators of health and safety
performance and the use of different safety performance indicators, such as the companies'
safety culture. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the safety measurement performance
process and analyze what is the potential role of safety culture in this process.
Keywords Health and safety, Performance measurement (quality), Health and safety requirements
Measuring performance
In the last decade, companies' management has widely agreed on the importance of the
implementation and certi®cation of structured management systems, such as quality management systems, environment management systems, and recently, occupational health and safety
(OH&S) management systems (NP 4397, 2001). The implementation of such systems requires
that companies can be able to measure their results and achievements concerning each
particular system.
As a part of the OH&S management system, the performance measure is as important as other
issues, such as ®nancial, production or service delivery management.
As mentioned previously, measuring performance is an integrated part of any management
system (Figure 1), and has several goals. As far as it concerns OH&S management systems,
the safety performance measurement (SPM) can provide information, help in introspection, in
decision-making, and in addressing different information needs (HSE, 2001).
The primary purpose of SPM is to provide information on the progress and current status
of the strategies, processes and activities used by an organization to control risks to OH&S.
Measurement information sustains the operation and development of the OH&S management
system, and consequently risk control, by providing information on how the system operates in
practice, identifying areas where remedial action is required, establishing a basis for continual
improvement and providing feedback and motivation.
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003, pp. 20-28, ã MCB UP Limited, ISSN 1368-3047
DOI 10.1108/13683040310509287
Figure 1 Performance measurement within the OH&S management system
(adapted from HSE, 2001)
policy
development
Policy
Organizing
Auditing
Planning and
implementing
MEASURING
PERFORMANCE
Reviewing
Performance
feedback loop
to improve
performance
As a way for introspection, SPM should seek to answer questions, such as: What is the position
relative to the overall OH&S aims and objectives? How is the company in comparison with
others? Does the management system improve the OH&S? Is the management of OH&S
effective? Is the OH&S management reliable? Is the OH&S management ef®cient? Is the
company culture supportive of OH&S, particularly pressed by competing demands?
These questions should be asked not only at the highest level but also at the different
management levels and across the organization. The aim should be to provide a complete
picture of the organization's OH&S performance.
In what concerns decision making the measurement information helps in deciding what goals
can be achieved in relation to the initial proposal, what progress is needed and reasonable
to expect in some circumstances, how it might be achieved against particular restraints
(for example resources or time), and how to prioritize and have an effective use of resources.
The type of information achieved by SPM is of primary importance for people in organizations
who have particular responsibilities within the OH&S management system. These will include
directors, senior managers, line managers, supervisors, OH&S professionals and employees/
safety representatives.
It is also important to have an overall coherence in approach so that individual measuring
activities are aligned within the overall performance measurement framework. As a matter of
fact, this coherence should result in a hierarchical set of linked measures which re¯ect the
organization's structure. Because performance measures should be derived principally to meet
an internal need, there will be a limit to the number which can be used meaningfully from
organization to organization (i.e. for external benchmarking purposes) rather than within the
context of a particular organization.
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
PAGE 21
Although the primary focus for performance measurement is to meet the internal needs
of the organization, there is an increasing need to demonstrate to external stakeholders
(regulators, insurance companies, shareholders, suppliers, contractors, members of the involving
community etc.) that arrangements to control OH&S risks are in place, operating correctly
and effectively. While some ``high-risk'' industries may have recognized that they had been
``accepted'' by their local community and society, pressure for accountability is reaching
other sectors through some concepts such as corporate social responsibility (HSE, 2001).
Organizations will need to communicate their performance in ways that are meaningful to their
various stakeholders.
Traditional safety performance indicators
If managers were asked how they measured their companies' performance, they would
probably mention several economic indicators, such as liquid pro®t, return on investment or
market share. A common feature of these indexes would be that they are generally positive in
nature, re¯ecting achievement, rather than negative, which re¯ects failure.
If the same managers were asked how they measured their companies' OH&S performance,
it is likely that they only expressed accidents and illness, or diseases, related statistics. While
the general business performance of an organization is subject to a range of positive measures,
for OH&S it is frequently done with a few negative measures (lost time injuries, total injuries,
lost work days rates, etc.) (Williams, 1999). Some companies also report, as a performance
measure, the OH&S compliance indicating, for example, how many citations and penalties or
®nes relating to safety issues the company had in the period being measured.
OH&S differs from many areas measured by managers because success results in the absence
of an outcome (accidents or illness) rather than a presence. A low accident or ill-health rate,
even over a period of years, is no guarantee that risks are being controlled and will not lead to
accidents or professional diseases in the future. This is particularly true in companies where
there is a low probability of accidents but where major hazards are present. Here the historical
records of accidents and illnesses can be a deceptive indicator of safety performance.
Organizations need to recognize that there is no single reliable measure of OH&S performance.
What is required is a variety of measures, providing information on a range of OH&S activities.
As organizations recognize the importance of managing OH&S they become aware of the
problems with using accidents and ill-health statistics alone as the unique measure of OH&S
performance.
The use of accident rates, particularly when related to reward systems, can lead to such events
not being reported in order to ``maintain'' performance, or to reduce accident assurance
classi®cation. Additionally, whether a particular event results in an injury or accident is often a
matter of chance, so it will not necessarily re¯ect whether or not a hazard is under control.
In small or low-risk companies, these inconveniences could be accentuated, because a
hypothetical low accident rate can lead to complacency, and also result in a few data points
available.
Because of the disadvantages associated with the use of accident and ill-health data alone
when measuring performance, some organizations have recognized the need of more proactive
measures of performance. Generally, this is translated into a search for things, which can be
easily counted, such as number of training courses or number of inspections.
Some authors (Pardy, 1999) argue that SPM indicators have been developed in three
different phases: traditional, transitional and modern phases. The ®rst one is, as mentioned
previously, characterized by traditional indicators, such as the statistical issues and the
percentage of the budget allocated to OH&S. The second one, as the name may suggest,
represents a transitional phase and is characterized by the use of indicators of trends and other
PAGE 22
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
economic indicators, such as the savings obtained through prevention. Finally, the last one is
characterized by the use of positive indicators in measuring OH&S. This represents the
approach which will be described in this paper.
What is often absent is a systematic approach to deriving these measures and how they link to
the risk control or mitigation process. The random approach, which is based purely on what
is easiest to measure, is of limited value. The resultant data provide no information on how
these values were achieved, whether they are ``acceptable'' (i.e. good/bad) or represented the
quality and effectiveness of the activity. A more disciplined approach to SPM is required. This is
important not only to ensure that measurement is effective but also to ensure effective use of the
resources used to measure performance.
Using safety culture
Despite the minor theoretical development, a growing number of investigators and practitioners,
in particular within the occupational safety area, has been emphasizing the importance of the
organizational culture in individual perception and in risk behavior in workplaces.
The terms ``safety culture'' or ``safety climate'' have been used to describe the output of an
organization in terms of such an assumption of the value given to safety issues by individuals or
groups of individuals. The use of the term ``climate'' seems to indicate a temporary or seasonal
characteristic (Rundmo et al., 1996). On the opposite, the use of ``culture'' assumes the
existence of an acquired and developed knowledge, and in this way, implying some stability.
Zhang et al. (2002), in a comprehensive review of the concept of safety culture, establish the
following de®nitions:
J Safety culture: the enduring value and priority placed on worker and public safety by everyone in every group at every level of an organization. It refers to the extent to which individuals
and groups will commit to personal responsibility for safety; act to preserve, enhance and
communicate safety concerns.
J Safety climate: the temporal state measure of safety culture, subject to commonalties among
individual perceptions of the organization. It is therefore situationally based, refers to the
perceived state of safety at a particular place and time, is relatively unstable, and subject to
change depending on the features of the current environment or prevailing conditions.
Despite the possible differences between concepts, the term culture will be used as designating
both concepts. For authors working in this area, the most important in¯uence in the de®nition
of safety behavior is the safety culture of the organization they belong to (HSE, 1997). This
is, presently, one of the major investigation areas related to risk perception in occupational
environments.
While the empirical evidence of the culture's effect on risk behavior remain limited, some
research seems to demonstrate that the presence of a ``complete'' knowledge of the risk
among workers could be considered, at least by inference, as being suggestive of the cultural
in¯uence on the risk behavior. In fact, in contrast with most of the studies in the perception of
the risk area, the results of some studies on safety culture have contributed with a suf®ciently
signi®cant number of empirical evidences suggesting that individuals have a perception,
substantially precise, of risks in their occupational environments (Rundmo, 1992; Flin et al.,
1996).
However, these conclusions are, to a large extent, related to physical risk perception in high-risk
environments, such as, the off-shore environment in oil and gas exploitation, nuclear and
chemical plants. However, only a few available studies exist in occupational environments with
less risk, or more trivial risks (Arezes, 2002).
Other conclusions that can be drawn by these studies suggest that this effect can be
substantially lesser for risk perception associate with dangerous substances exposure and in
workers operating in complex environments, where the immediate risks are less observed
(Weyman et al., 1999).
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
PAGE 23
Although some of the results, found in many of these studies, are not always consistent and
present some variability, it seems to emerge a relative consensus in what concerns the factors
that could in¯uence safety culture, such as, safety management, work force enrolment, risk
attitudes, personal responsibility, safety rules violations and workplace physical environment
(Cox et al., 1998).
Safety culture is deeply related with organizational culture. The existence of such a culture
supposes an organization where people share values, which will affect and in¯uence the
attitudes and behavior of its members (Cooper, 2000a). The safety culture is a sub-dimension
of this organizational culture, which supposedly in¯uences the attitude and behavior of the
organization members in relation to an occupational OH&S performance (Donald, 1998;
Cooper, 2000b).
The safety culture is, according to Lee et al. (2000), understood as the product of
multiple interactions between people (psychological), functions (behavioral) and organizations
(contextual).
The safety culture, risk perception, workers attitudes, safety concern and other organizational
factors can affect the acceptability of breaking safety rules and, in that sense, being able
to affect risk behavior. The safety climate and workers attitude contribute, signi®cantly, to the
variability found in workers risk behavior in occupational settings (Rundmo, 2000).
According to Groover (2001), one of the challenges that organizations face is the risk recognition
and the appropriate reply by its collaborators. If risk is not well perceived or recognized, the
safety performance continuous improvement is hardly achieved.
The knowledge of workers' risk perception and its attitudes concerning safety is needed for
the development and understanding of safety culture (Williamson et al., 1997). On the other
hand, the safety culture seems to have a signi®cant effect in risk behavior (Rundmo et al., 1997).
In this respect, Vries et al. (2000), in a study carried out in occupational environments,
concludes that workers with more evident risk behavior are the ones who have a lesser bene®ts
perception, who have found lesser social support and, mainly, the ones who have had
bigger barriers to ``compliance'' behaviors. These barriers are, generally, related to how the
organizations face and deal with the occupational safety, or in other words, by their own safety
culture.
In the standardized guidelines for implementation of OH&S management systems (for
example OHSAS 18002, 2000 and prNP 4410, 2002), a wide range of measures to monitoring
and measuring performance are proposed, which includes the use of several methods,
such as:
J results from risk identi®cation, assessment and control;
J systematic inspections using checklists of workplaces;
J previous analysis of new installations, equipment, materials, etc.
J inspection in order to verify if all machines and safety systems are operational;
J assessment of occupational exposure to physical, chemical and biological agents and
comparison with established threshold or recommended values;
J evaluation of workers behaviors in order to identify unsafe work practices which could be
corrected;
J documentation and record analysis;
J benchmarking of OH&S practices; and
J identi®cation of workers' attitudes towards the implementation of the OH&S management
system.
PAGE 24
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
Some of these methods could be obtained through the application of a safety culture
evaluation.
As an evaluation method of SPM, safety culture evaluation consists of questioning workers
about their attitudes to facing risk, the safety management or the safety procedures (Flin et al.,
1998). OH&S climate is amenable to measurement, and recently, some questionnaire packages
and other tools have been developed, in order to allow organizations to canvass the views of
their employees on some key aspects of OH&S within their organization, as well as diagnosis, or
to assess the safety culture levels of each company. Some of those packages are commercially
distributed (HSE, 1997) and others are, partial or totally, published in scienti®c papers, such as
those mentioned in Davies et al. (1999) and Cox et al. (2000).
The safety culture evaluation results can have a wide range of uses, ranging from the
conception of speci®c training programs to corrective actions based on these evaluations or, as
it is pretended to illustrate in this paper, as a safety performance measurement indicator of
companies or organizations.
The measurement of safety culture, as mentioned previously, can be done in several ways and
using several tools. Nevertheless, there are some common dimensions in a great number of
safety culture or climate assessment tools.
Within the set of developed tools with the purpose of the safety culture evaluation, it is
possible to verify that the most frequent evaluated dimensions are related with management
and managers (72 percent of the cases), OH&S management systems (67 percent) and risk
control (67 percent), followed by less frequent subjects such as work pressure and work
capacity which appear approximately in one third of the studies (Flin et al., 2000). This
conclusion seems to con®rm the importance of management and its concern to safety issues,
as a factor of paramount importance in organizations' safety culture.
Davies et al. (1999), analyzing several safety culture/climate tools, group the more frequent
items in some ``general subject'' groups, such as:
J training and competence;
J job security and job satisfaction;
J pressure for production;
J communications;
J perceptions of personal involvement in health and safety;
J accidents (including incidents and near misses);
J perception of organizational/management commitment to OH&S;
J merits of the OH&S procedures/instructions/rules;
J rule breaking; and
J workforce view on state of safety culture.
Although safety culture can be measured and used as an important indicator of safety
performance, and despite the fact of the consensual acceptance of an organizational culture
concerning safety, its in¯uence in safety performance is not so consensual.
The utility of safety culture is based, essentially, in the assumption that this could have an
in¯uence in workers' behavior changing and, through that, in¯uence the safety performance.
However, it should be noted that this assumption is not always observed and consensual, Hale
et al. (2000) for example, veri®ed that safety performance could be improved, however without
any signi®cant change in safety culture. These authors go further, pointing out that there is little
evidence that the opposite can occur, i.e. a changing in safety culture could improve safety
performance.
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
PAGE 25
From various studies, it is possible to conclude that the OH&S culture of an organization is an
important factor in ensuring the effectiveness of risk control. The OH&S management system
has an important in¯uence on the safety culture, which in turn impacts on the effectiveness of
the OH&S management system. Measuring aspects of the safety culture is, therefore, part
of the overall process of measuring OH&S performance. Many of the activities which support
the development of a positive safety culture need to be measured.
The safety culture measurement can gather information through several ways. The use of
questionnaires is frequently used, but talking to people to elicit facts and their experiences as
well as gauging their own opinions are also important.
Beyond the possibility of using safety culture in SPM, it should be noted and emphasized
the main goal of OH&S management systems, and that is minimizing risks in occupational
environments. For this purpose, and beyond the individual information mentioned previously,
SPM should also address other information, by examining written reports, documents and
records and through direct observation of work conditions and peoples' behavior. Direct
observation includes inspection activities and monitoring of work environment, namely physical,
chemical and biological environment (e.g. thermal environment, noise, vibration, dust and
chemical concentrations, biological risks) and people's OH&S related behavior.
Summary and conclusion
Recent years have witnessed a growing concern over the issue of safety culture within the
research on occupational safety issues.
The purpose of the present paper is to summarize the safety measurement performance
process and analyze how this measurement can be done using safety culture, as well as the
highly related concept of safety climate. From this review, it is possible to reveal that SPM is a
crucial aspect of the OH&S management system.
The traditional safety performance indicators, such as the accident statistics indices, seem to
have a limited application and may not re¯ect with precision the company's safety performance.
The efforts to de®ne and assess safety culture have arisen, most of the times, from high-risk or
high complex industries, such as nuclear, chemical, oil and gas industries. Furthermore, the
application of safety culture evaluation within OH&S management systems is relatively recent.
In despite of the importance of the analyzed concepts, there is a considerable disagreement
among safety professionals, both within and across industries, in de®ning how safety culture
should be de®ned and whether or not safety culture is inherently different from the concept of
safety climate.
It is expected that this paper will enable researchers and safety practitioners to understand better how concepts, such as safety culture, can be also used to measure companies'
safety performance. This application will facilitate the measurement process as well as its
precision. This will permit companies to assess and compare safety performances, even if
data on accidents and illness are scarce, which ultimately will help in improving the de®nition
of strategies for the development of working conditions.
References
Arezes, P.M. (2002), Risk Perception of Occupational Noise Exposure, PhD Thesis, University of Minho,
Portugal, November.
Cooper, M. (2000a), ``Towards a model of safety culture'', Safety Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 111-36.
Cooper, M. (2000b), ``Safety training ± a special case?'', Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 24
No. 9, pp. 481-90.
PAGE 26
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
Cox, S. and Cheyne, A. (1998), ``Hazard perceptions and attitudes to safety'', Proceedings of Society for
Risk Analysis-Europe Annual Meeting.
Cox, S. and Cheyne, A. (2000), ``Assessing safety culture in offshore environments'', Safety Science, Vol. 34
No. 1-3, pp. 111-29.
Davies, F., Spencer, R. and Dooley, K. (1999), ``Summary guide to safety climate tools'', Offshore
Technology Report No. 063/99, Health and Safety Executive, UK.
Donald, I. (1998), ``Going beyond occupational safety: relating safety attitudes and other indicators of safety
performance'', Proceedings of Society for Risk Analysis-Europe Annual Meeting.
Flin, R., Mearns, K., Gordon, R. and Fleming, M. (1996), ``Risk perception by offshore workers on UK oil and
gas platforms'', Safety Science, Vol. 22, pp. 131-45.
Flin, R., Mearns, K., Gordon, R. and Fleming, M. (1998), ``Measuring safety climate on UK offshore oil and
gas installations'', Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil
and Gas Exploration and Production, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Richardson, Caracas.
Flin, R., Mearns, K., O'Connor, P. and Bryden, R. (2000), ``Measuring safety climate: identifying the
common features'', Safety Science, Vol. 34 No. 1-3, pp. 177-92.
Groover, D. (2001), ``Why can't employees see risk?'', Personal Communication at AIHce Conference,
New Orleans, LA.
Hale, A.R., Guldenmund, F. and Swuste, P. (2000), ``Are safety culture and safety performance
related?'', Proceedings of the First International Conference ORP 2000 on Occupational Risk Prevention,
Spain.
HSE ± Health and Safety Executive (1997), Health and Safety Climate Survey Tool, Information Pack, HSE
Books, 1997, ISBN 0 7176 1462 X, available online at ww.hse.gov.uk/pubns/misc097.pdf
HSE ± Health and Safety Executive (2001), Web-based Guide to Measuring Health and Safety Performance,
available online in www.hse.gov.uk/opsunit/perfmeas.htm
Lee, T. and Harrison, K. (2000), ``Assessing safety culture in nuclear power stations'', Safety Science,
Vol. 34 No. 1-3, pp. 61-97.
NP 4397 (2001), Sistemas de GestaÄo da SegurancËa e SauÂde no trabalho (OSHSAS 18000), IPQ/CEN,
Lisboa.
OHSAS 18002 (2000), Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems ± Guidelines for the
Implementation of OHSAS 18001.
Pardy, W. (1999), ``Performance measurement for workplace safety'', Vermont Safety Information
Resources on the Internet, Powerpoint presentation available online in siri.uvm.edu/ppt/perfmeas/
pr NP 4410 (2002), Sistemas de gestaÄo da segurancËa e sauÂde do trabalho ± Linhas de orientacËaÄo para a
implementacËaÄo da norma NP 4397, IPQ/CEN, Lisboa.
Rundmo, T. (1992), ``Risk perception and safety on offshore petroleum platforms. Part I. Perception of
risk'', Safety Science, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 39-52.
Rundmo, T. (2000), ``Safety climate, attitudes and risk perception in Norsk Hydro'', Safety Science, Vol. 34
No. 1-3, pp. 47-59.
Rundmo, T., Mearns, K., Flin, R., Fleming, M. and Gordon, R. (1996), ``Safety status, job situation and
perceived risk in Norwegian and UK offshore workers ± a comparative study'', Proceedings of Society for
Risk Analysis-Europe Annual Meeting.
Rundmo, T., Ulleberg, P. and Bjerke, W. (1997), ``Safety attitudes and risk behaviour ± employee
assessments'', Proceedings of Society for Risk Analysis-Europe Annual Meeting.
Weyman, A. and Kelly, C. (1999), ``Risk perception and risk communication: a review of the literature'',
Health and Safety Executive Contract Research Report No. 248/1999, 76 pp, UK.
Williams, W. (1999), Local Government Occupational Noise Management Implementation Strategy, Final
Report GR 97/0016, Workcover NSW.
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
PAGE 27
Williamson, A., Feyer, A., Cairns, D. and Biancotti, D. (1997), ``The development of a measure of safety
climate: the role of safety perceptions and attitudes'', Safety Science, Vol. 25 No. 1-3, pp. 15-27.
Vries, H. and Lechner, L. (2000), ``Motives for protective behavior against carcinogenic substances in the
workplace: a pilot study among Dutch workers'', Journal of Occupational Environmental Medicine, Vol. 42
No. 1, pp. 88-95.
Zhang, H., Wiegmann, D.A., von Thaden, T.L., Sharma, G. and Mitchell, A.A. (2002), ``Safety culture: a
concept in chaos?'', Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics
Society, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica.
PAGE 28
|
MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
|
VOL. 7 NO. 4 2003