What are the benefits?
A safety culture assessment allows an organisation to better understand how its people perceive safety and the company’s approach to health & safety management. It allows the organisation to identify both strengths and weaknesses that then enable it to continuously monitor and improve its approach to health and safety.
The most important reason for understanding a company’s safety culture is because it has a direct impact on the safety of its employees, contractors and the public. Several high profile accidents in the rail and other industries have highlighted the consequences of poor safety cultures. The benefits of an improved safety culture are improved safety performance and reduced accidents.
The improved management processes and attitudes to work involved in developing a good safety culture will also have benefits external to safety, such as improved reliability and performance, and reduced costs due to the reduction of errors. The industry regulator, The Office of Rail Regulation (formerly HMRI) believes a good safety culture is vital for safety performance and expects rail companies to perform safety culture assessments and act on their findings - see ORR Expectations.