Presented at the Australia Water Association North Queensland Regional Conference 2013 by Heather Ikin, Consultant Psychologist at TMS Consulting. Safety at work is everybody’s business, but instilling a culture of responsible safety behaviour can be challenging in the Australian Water Industry. Too often, organisations rely on the existence of a safety management system (SMS) to provide a safe workplace. Managers become frustrated that ‘the system’ has not prevented incidents occurring, but rarely look at the role they play in creating a safety culture that brings the SMS alive. A proactive safety culture is vital to the continuing success of an SMS - it gives the dynamic energy needed to ensure that the system will provide a cycle of continuous improvement. However, in attempting to create a proactive safety culture, the majority of organisations in the water industry make the mistake of only focussing on safety behaviours. It is not just behaviours that need to change, but more importantly mindsets. This paper outlines how mindsets are the thoughts that drive actions, and behaviours are simply the actions that people display. Mindsets and behaviours underpin all successful change; without them, change is unlikely to be successful. Leaders must engage mindsets by developing compelling, and meaningful messaging (commonly known as a ‘change story’) in order to align the organisation to achieve step change in the safety culture. This paper explores the concept of safety culture, and outlines how organisations must determine the maturity of their safety culture by identifying strengths and weaknesses, which can be achieved through conducting a gap analysis. Of most importance, this paper provides practical tips and a structured framework on how it can be improved within the Australian Water industry. The framework is based on seven key levers that must be used to embedding lasting change and drive a high performing culture. These include: 1. Leadership 2. Organisational Design 3. Performance Management 4. Communication 5. Reward and Recognition 6. Reporting 7. Learning and Development In order to develop a high performing safety culture, the hearts and minds of employees must be engaged. Each individual must ‘own’ the culture, and understand the inherent need to change to be more focused on safety. In turn, this must translate into an organisation wide desire to achieve a high performing safety culture.

1. tmsconsulting.com.au
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IDENTIFYING THE LEVERS TO
EMBED SAFETY CULTURE WITHIN
THE AUSTRALIAN WATER
INDUSTRY
Presented by Heather Ikin, Consultant Psychologist
Australian Water Association North QLD Regional
Conference 2013
13 August, 2013

2. © 2013 TMS Consulting
What is Safety Culture?
Shared values (what is important) and
beliefs (how things work) that interact with
an organisation's structures and control
systems to produce behavioural norms (the
way we do things around here).

3. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Why it’s important
Time
SafetyPerformance
Failing to address
safety culture may
lead to an eventual
plateau in safety
performance
Investment into greater
protection for workers
and engineering a safer
work environment does
not guarantee any
improvement to safety
performance in the
absence of improvement
to safety culture.
(Feng, 2013)

4. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Top Down versus Bottom Up
Senior Executives
Middle Management
Frontline
Top Down
+ Communicate the vision
+ Establish safety priorities
+ Ensure the implementation of
appropriate regulations, policies,
procedures and practices
Bottom Up
+ Change individual safety attitudes
+ Acknowledge the employee as
expert
+ Use mechanisms for upwards
feedback and communication

5. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Understanding Individual Safety Behaviours
Person
BehaviourSituation
Cooper, 2000

6. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Likely to be defiant and
avoid completing
assessments, particularly
if perceived to be time
poor
Disinterested, apathetic, fr
ustrated, resentful and
cynical
Risk assessments are a
waste of time; they are
just a way for the
organisation to cover
themselves

7. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Understanding Individual Safety Behaviours
+ Organisational expectations versus individual
limitations in safety behaviour
+ Gaining worker commitment to safety is critical
+ Safety needs to be personally relevant and
meaningful
+ Safety needs to be seen as
an investment rather than
a cost

8. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Influencing Safety Behaviours
+ Engaging hearts and minds – does it need to
be that “fluffy”?
Powerful Questions
are key!
If you were seriously injured in a
workplace incident, what would
you miss the most?

9. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Creating a Change Story
+ What’s in it for me?
+ Why do we need to
focus on safety culture?
+ Are we capable of doing
it?
+ Who is supporting this?

10. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Embedding Safe Work Behaviours
+ Embedding safety culture requires leverage
touch points throughout the organisation
+ The process involves reinforcing safe attitudes
and behaviours, and celebrating achievements
(e.g. reductions in safety incidents, increased
rates of risk assessment completion)
+ It involves integrating all aspects of the
organisational environment and system (both
the tangible and non-tangible elements)

11. © 2013 TMS Consulting

12. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Practical Advice for Safety Culture Change
+ Undertake a gap analysis
+ Conduct safety climate surveys
+ Conduct in-field coaching
+ Hold safety symposiums
+ Implement whole of organisation engagement
strategies

13. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Questions
1. We seem to apply the same health and safety
sledge hammer to everything we do, including
even a paper cut. It seems that workers are
consequently becoming disengaged, think health
and safety is a joke, and have the attitude I'm just
not going to do it. How do we get the balance right
between focusing on rare but significant events
and the day-to-day 'paper cuts'?

14. © 2013 TMS Consulting
Questions
2. Following on from the first question, what's your
thoughts on the usefulness of statistics being that
we are capturing data on everything from very
serious to very minor incidents? Are they that
useful to track?

15. © 2013 TMS Consulting
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