Understanding Society Safety culture or safety behavior?
Article about "Andrew Hopkins is a much-published expert on industrial safety who has an important set of insights into the causes of industrial accidents. "
One of his interesting working papers is on the topic of safety culture in the drilling industry, “Why safety cultures don’t work” (link).
Companies that set out to create a “safety culture” often expend huge amounts of resource trying to change the way operatives, foremen and supervisory staff think and feel about safety. The results are often disappointing. (1)
Changing the way people think is nigh impossible, but setting up organizational structures that monitor compliance with procedure, even if that procedure is seen as redundant or unnecessary, is doable. (3)
Hopkins’ central point is that safety requires change of routine behavior, not in the first instance change of culture or thought. This means that management and regulatory agencies need to establish safe practices and then enforce compliance through internal and external measures. He uses the example of seat belt usage: campaigns to encourage the use of seat belts had little effect, but behavior changed when fines were imposed on drivers who continued to refrain from seat belt usage.