A situation that most organisations would like to find themselves is one in which good safety attitudes and behaviours are enforced by the workforce itself. The journey towards this cultural level is obviously a long one. But it is achievable.

Acceptance to any group demands conformity to the group’s behavioural and attitudinal norms. If certain safe attitudes and behaviours can be adopted as the norm, then the group as a whole will apply social sanctions to an individual who deviates from this norm. If people wish to remain part of the social fabric of the group, they soon revert back to the safety norm and behave safely.

An example of this was recently experienced on one of our projects on a North Sea oil platform. One of our initial findings when we arrived on the installation was that there was a culture of very poor responses to interventions. A coaching program to develop the safety culture of the platform has taken place over the last few months and as a result there have been a number of changes to the level of risk that people are wiling to tolerate.

A poor response by an individual to an intervention this week, was so far short of what is now considered to be normal and acceptable behaviour that it prompted a very strong collective response from the workforce, which demonstrated clearly to the individual involved that his behaviour was unacceptable and not how things were done in that organisation any more.

If you would like to find out more about how to develop your safety culture to a similar level, contact:

www.potentia.uk.com

0044 (0)191 229 9515