Exploring the safety culture in a manufacturing company : a case study approach

Abstract

There is little awareness about what is the role of occupational safety culture, how to implement a positive safety culture and how safety culture impacts safety outcomes in an organisation. For this dissertation, a thematic analysis approach was used to reach the main objective of this study, that is, to explore the organisation’s and employees’ perspective on safety culture. For this reason, semi-structured interviews were conducted amongst eight employees from different levels of the same organisation. An organisation’s culture generally influences safety outcomes. This is due to the fact that safety culture is a combination of workers’ values, attitudes, behaviour and perspective determining the overall commitment to the organisation’s health and safety management. This study explores various aspects of safety culture, such as difficulties encountered due to different languages spoken within the organisation, particularly when it comes to the announcement of safety rules and procedures due to the fact that about twenty-five percent of the employees within the organisation under review originate from different countries all over the world. Since safety culture has got to do with human behaviour, this study investigates employee backgrounds, previous experiences, and responsibilities in relation with safety culture, also looking into the obstruction and promotion of health and safety culture. Safety culture is a broad subject, in the sense that management identify their vision to improve safety outcomes whilst employees have to follow management’s perspectives. Commitment needs to be shown and all employees must adhere with management’s safety principles. Management systems and safety policies help to improve safety culture by keeping everyone aware of the importance of safety. By positive safety culture, organisations could see a reduction in occupational health and safety accidents, improvement in employee satisfaction and have a positive work environment, where employees are responsible to their health and safety and the safety of their colleagues. Safety culture is a process needing constant development, improvement in planning and keeping up to date with new technologies. It should not only be a programme starting and finishing when results are achieved. Conclusions consolidate that everyone needs to be involved in achieving a safety culture for the wellbeing of all employees.