Facts To Have On Safety Culture Assessments

By Jason Hughes


It is common to find institutions seeking for safety cultures without them already knowing that they may be likely having one in place. This often happens when the leadership discovers that the Environmental Health and Safety of that entity is not satisfactory. Under such situations, a Safety Culture Assessments can help check on the current situation and suggest better practices to improve on the welfare culture of such institution.

In conducting such an audit, the early stages involves looking for assessors who can carry out the task at hand. Their first task will be to review the documentation, policies and program of the activities going on in the company. Providing all the documents will allow them to familiarize with the daily activities and give them general understanding. It also leads to realization of missing documentations that ought to be available.

Such an assessment should involve the whole company staff which thus requires a prior communication to all employees concerning the exercise. It would be best if everyone is alerted about this assessment and is made to understand that it is not a fault finding mission but rather a means to improve on their work environment and the performance of the entity as a whole. This will also influence total cooperation from all the staff.

A site visit is also part of the activities in welfare assessments. This involves the auditors taking time to visit the location with guidance from a personnel in the company. Site visits opens the assessors to more understanding of workflow as indicated in the documents they had reviewed. It also allows them to take note of precise status of the site and its well-being provisions as indicated in the documents.

The assessors should have a meeting with the leadership of organization which will involve discussions about the work processes, their current state of safety culture and what they feel should be done about it. This will help them to identify issues that need to be straightened out and additional practices in order to achieve welfare excellence. This should however have no effect on the daily operations of the company.

The next step involves a conduction of interviews and focus group discussions. This allows the assessor to dig in more and be able to understand the welfare perception of the individuals working in the company. This activity focuses on the definition of safety, history in successes and failures of some cultures, knowledge support among others. Focus group discussions should involve a representative of all levels of work involved in the organization for better results.

After holding discussions and interviews, a close up meeting with the personnel ought to be conducted. This allows the assessors to discuss their preliminary findings after conducting their surveys and also address the current operational issues that are indeed affecting well-being excellence in the institution. This exercise results into a report which should entail actionable steps for the institution to take in order to bring transformation.

Achieving a steady assessment requires the involvement of a professional team. This requires the company owner to be keen in selecting individuals who have a good reputation in providing working solutions to institutions and are excellent in their assessments.




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