1. Safety Culture Improvement
Dr. Mark Fleming CN Professor of Safety Culture Saint Mary’s University
Mr. Rick Baker General Manager CN

2. Outline Background Safety culture improvement approaches Challenges
Conclusions

3. Safety culture typology
Strong
Weak
Unsafe

4. Culture and Safety Safety Culture Safety outcomes Safety Interventions
Norms and
Behaviour
Safety Interventions
Enabler/
Barrier

5. Assessment-improvement
Conduct safety culture assessment
Identify weaknesses and opportunities for improvement
Create improvement plan (n steps)
Implement plan
Re-assess culture

6. Organisational environment
Assessment
Traditional approach
Culture perceptions
Safety behaviour
Organisational environment
Management practices
Safety systems
Communication
Supervision practices
Management attitude toward safety
Production pressure
Status of safety
Supervisor attitude
Complying with rules and procedures
Risk taking
Encouraging others to work safely

7. Improvement journey
Simple
Complicated
Complex

8. Focus of improvement Employee Attitude, motivation, accountability
System
Identify weaknesses and employee needs
Understanding
How safety is understood and enacted
Framework
Using culture as an improvement framework

9. Challenges
Lack of direct correspondence between weaknesses and possible improvement actions
Safety culture issues are often deep, long term and not easily resolved
Management expectations do not align with required strategy
Static approach to dynamic situation

10. Safety Culture Change
“Peoples attitudes and opinions have been formed over decades of life and cannot be changed by having a few meetings or giving a few lectures”
(Mao Tse Tung) 6