What is Safety Culture?
Well lets first consider what culture is!
Culture may be considered as how we perceive or understand the world around us our Beliefs, our Attitudes as well as our Values which we adopt as our own driven by a number of factors including the need to conform to appease and please others, or indeed from a fear of appearing different.
So in talking about culture we are not in fact talking about a single element but rather a multi-faceted and complex environment. So therefore we may consider that we are exposed to and display concurrence with several different cultures depending on who we are with and where we are.
Some of our culturally driven behaviours are rigid whereas others are less so and may be more easily impacted by external stimulus. Such external stimulus can be modified by external objectives a desire to please an individual for example or by our internally driven goals and aspirations.
So now we can consider exactly what is Safety Culture?
Firstly Safety Culture is connected with our Values.
What we see as our fixed expectations – means we will not easily deviate from such fixed elements.
Now to consider the associated beliefs which may modify in some way our values. How will we be viewed externally where there is maybe a higher expectation alternatively where we may find that we are driven in a particular way to confirm or to fit in with our peers?
Also impacted by “Norms” particular ways that other people act or respond to what is required, how do we view these norms? Do we see conflict or are we happy to acquiesce and to comply with the expectation placed on us.
In general it is far easy to be the same rather than to be different.
Creating a positive safety culture.
As we consider the impact of Safety Culture we should also understand that to be most effective we should create an environment whereby the norm becomes the behaviour we seek, rather than trying to impose such a system on any one person or group.
We may say that a positive safety culture is achieved when all staff feel a specific responsibility at all times for their own personal actions and the impact these actions may have in respect of safety behaviour both directly and in respect of others. Moreover that this specific responsibility has become a fundamental attribute of behaviour.
Sofema Aviation Services currently offers more than 25 Safety Management system related courses including detailed SMS implementation courses which may include detailed workshops specific to the organisation designed to support the initial stages of the optimization program.
For details please see https://sassofia.com/regulatory-training-courses or email office@sassofia.com
