| Safety climate/attitude surveys (eg. RSSB safety culture survey; HSE Climate survey) |
| Description | - Questionnaires designed to elicit workforce attitudes on key aspects of safety culture.
- Generally the whole workforce is surveyed.
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| Advantages | - Allows all the workforce’s views to be considered.
- High profile – and if used correctly can help to enhance belief in the company’s commitment to health and safety.
- Reveals current attitudes & perceptions towards safety and safety management.
- Can clearly point to issues that need to be addressed.
- May be capable of identifying issues in some aspects of the safety management arrangements.
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| Limitations | - May only identify some inadequacies of the safety management systems.
- High profile raises workforce expectations about responses – can lead to management losing credibility if response perceived as being inadequate.
- High response rates required to ensure results fully reflect organisation’s culture – this can be difficult to achieve unless implemented well.
- Results often do not directly identify what underlying issues cause responses hence:
- need to do further investigations to interpret results; - understanding the problem does not necessarily identify how to improve |
| When and how to use | - As part of a committed safety culture improvement programme as a high profile intervention AND when prepared and committed to respond to the outcomes.
- Repeat surveys (every 18 months – 2 years) for benchmarking and sign of continuing commitment.
- As a way of enabling all employees to participate in a safety improvement activity.
- As a means of demonstrating management commitment – BUT only if prepared to respond promptly and fully to outcomes.
- DO NOT use if uncertain what issues are likely to be revealed, or without planning, resourcing and being committed to address outcomes.
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