Safety culture

Safety culture (hereinafter, the Culture) is priority to which an enterprise places safety within its undertakings. The strongest Culture places safety as the primary priority driving the way employees perform their work, while the weakest Culture refers to organization's ignorance to safety issues.

Safety is usually a function of five types of factors -- (a) the environment, (b) assets, (c) human factors, (d) social factors, and (e) organizational factors. Thus, safety can commonly be improved by reducing the frequency of human error and the consequences when it does occur. So, the Culture can be defined as the domain of organizational culture that is concerned about safety.

Positive Culture

Awareness

Knowledge about complex systems alone only goes so far in mitigating human error. To combat error, an organization must teach not just how error may be avoided, but also it must adopt attitudes that promote safety above all else. Various researchers call these attitudes an organization's safety culture and identify top-level organizational support as the main predictor of a positive safety culture. Put briefly, in order for an organization to create and perpetuate a positive safety culture, senior management must take certain actions, such as:

1. Setting standards and expectations and providing resources to meet them.
2. Developing and enforcing standards that emphasize safe work practice.
3. Setting up meaningful incentive programs that reward safe and reliable behavior either monetarily or through other means such as days off, or awards of recognition for a job well done.

Change

An MRM training program provides personnel with the tools to assess and change their own behaviors to work safer and reduce human error. Unlike other safety programs, MRM is most effective when ALL employees are oriented toward a positive safety culture. Therefore, employees of all levels (upper-level managers included) are encouraged to participate and are trained alongside maintenance personnel.

Resources

MRM trains personnel to use the resources of their positions to encourage safe operations. For example, managers learn that a positive safety culture can only be fostered if line employees are provided the necessary resources to do their jobs correctly. Line employees must be given the tools that teach them how to do their jobs without error. As an example, upper-level managers provide and control resources such as the number of aircraft serviced at one time, the selection of employees to do the work, and the tools with which to perform the necessary tasks. Safety itself, however, is rooted in the actual behaviors of maintenance personnel in the hanger (or on the line). MRM training teaches employees what behaviors are best to use. MRM training also helps managers understand how their own choices affect which behaviors are ultimately used. In this way, the entire organization becomes oriented towards safe, error-free performance.