Safety culture

摘要

GOERING was supposed to have said "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver", but in management speak these days there's a lot of discussion about organisational culture. Part of the reason is the recognition that we cannot afford to have layers of managers and supervisors overseeing work. Many years ago I remember that at British Airways there were quality inspectors who checked the work of aircraft engineers during servicing, but that changed to engineers signing off their own work. This "delayering" has continued, accompanied by the search for ways in which people can be encouraged to work effectively under their own initiative. The issue is the same with accident prevention and safe working -- how do we get every worker to choose to work safely, to whistleblow on poor practice, to contribute to group efforts to make workplaces healthy and safe. This is the opposite to a regulatory and enforcement approach where safety officers conduct "hard hat and safety boot" inspections and criticise people for bad practices.