Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Facts To Have On Safety Culture Assessments

By Jason Hughes


Institutions that have a trend of focusing on achieving safety excellence basically allows them to put Environmental health and safety into perspective. The safety performance of a company is directly linked to its welfare culture which is often influenced by psychological, behavioral and situational management design of the company. This therefore brings out the need for Safety Culture Assessments in order to bring out best practices in welfare.

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.

The success of this activity will be achieved if all the members of company are made aware of such exercise. It is mandatory to have all personnel in the know of presence of the assessors and their main agenda in the company. This will allow the personnel to feel involved and also provide the assessors with the information they need. They should not take it as a fault finding activity.

The next step should be familiarization of site. This involves walking around the company, assisted by an authorized personnel in the company. The assessors get the opportunity to verify what is provided in the documentation and what is actually on the ground. It also allows them to come up with quick solutions to problems that they identify and will address at the end of the activity.

At this point, the assessor ought to have a sit down with the key informants, in this case, the leadership and key personnel on site. This also allows the team to have a word with the key informants so as to provide vital information and understanding of the current culture, identification of what needs to be changed in order to achieve excellence. This however, should not alter the daily workflow.

The team will further conduct individual interviews and focus group discussions. Focus group discussions should comprise of leaders from each work levels and stages so as to have proper representations of all working personnel. Individual interviews may involve further discussions with the leadership personnel on site so as to discuss on definitions of safety, communication excellence and probe further understanding of the information the team has already collected.

To wrap up the assessment, the assessors do carry out a closure meeting with the leaders of the organization. This is the opportune time to discuss on the basic findings as well as provision of short term recommendations prior to preparation of final report. The team will then provide a full report of the findings that were discussed and make it available to the company ensuring that workable solutions have been provided.

The assessment can be successful if it is carried out by a professional working team. If a company is interested in such an audit, it should take its time in selecting the best team that is locally present and is licensed. Prior selection of a qualified team will reduce time wastage and save on money spent.




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