We have developed a safety culture assessment method that takes our clients through five phases:

• Capturing the "way we want things done around here" in the form of a Safety Culture Framework. This is worked up with management to reflect the issues and the language of the organization

• Carrying out web-based or paper surveys of the people in the organization

• Performing on-site interviews using a team largely made up of people from the organization itself

• Producing reports that gives levels of detail from a single page overview down to the ratings and comments on each characteristic in the framework

• Assisting to identify the high leverage cultural areas for action

We have carried out safety culture work for clients in  Canada and overseas.

We have performed full assessments in the mining industry and the nuclear industry

We have delivered seminars and workshops to many organizations in Canada and internationally.

Our clients have included: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Transport Canada, Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, AECL, Areva Resources, Cameco Corporation and organizations in Romania, South Africa and Hungary. 

NO, we do not think that culture can be reduced entirely to measurement, but needs to be described in words as well.

However, statistics about how people perceive the culture are very useful to capture the prevailing traits and opinions.

A safety culture assessment is primarily focused on finding out about people’s perceptions about safety in their workplace rather than being a set of observations or investigations like an audit.

In an assessment we ask people at all levels about "what goes on around here" . We primarily ask about behaviours ("Does everyone follow the safety rules?") but also about personal perceptions ("Do you feel comfortable reporting a safety concern?")

Because we capture perceptions, the assessment cannot rate safety performance in absolute terms, especially in cases where performance standards are too low, or where people are not aware of the required standard.

Therefore interpreting the results is not as simple as thinking that high scores are “good” and low scores are “bad”, and a safety culture assessment should not be taken as a report on “the total state of safety in the organization”.