Facilitating a Change in HSE Culture: How To Understand an Organization's Culture and Affect Change

摘要

Introduction Facilitating a culture change in an organization, both large and small, is a daunting task. The first basic step in this process, to identify the existing culture of the organization, is often the first miscue. This can send the organization down the wrong path from the beginning resulting in wasted time and effort, and causing frustration. EH&S culture is often difficult to correctly determine because the factor of being “politically correct” may cloud the ability to see through facades disguising the true beliefs within the organization. One of the modern technical definitions of culture, “socially patterned human thoughts and behaviors” shows us that we must identify an organization's true culture through the behaviors and beliefs of all levels of employees. Being able to correctly assess an organization's culture is imperative to understanding what changes must occur in order for the entire organization to progress. An organization's EH&S program and its culture share a symbiotic relationship. Culture, employee behaviors and beliefs, initially defines the EH&S program or lack there of. The EH&S program, once implemented, will then affect the culture. As the culture changes, this in turn will allow the EH&S program to shift to a level of greater prominence, which will then again affect change in the organization's culture. This process will continue until halted by the culture reaching a point of resistance philosophically in which beliefs and/or behaviors can no longer be changed. Objective There are numerous theories of what an EH&S program is and is not. Consequently, there are numerous ideas of what essential elements a progressive EH&S program will require. In this paper we will look at six elements management commitment, employee involvement, management system, operations vs. EH&S, EH&S responsibilities, and reactive vs. proactive nature of hazard identification. We will use these elements as a guide in identifying an organization's existing culture, as well as how the elements can change an organization as it migrates through a six-stage matrix. In each stage, characteristics of each element are identified and by using these characteristics we can track how the elements progress and affect employee behaviors and beliefs, or culture shift, either forward or backward toward the next stage.