Evaluation of the level of safety culture

II.1- Scope of the literature review

Our review has considered the literature surrounding safety culture published since 1986. The focus is on discerning the characteristics of positive and negative safety cultures which will help to evaluate the level of safety culture of Biopharma. Documents for review were sourced from academic and applied literature, and we also exploited standards and laws.

II.2- Definitions regarding safety culture:

II.2.1 Safety:

Safety can be defined as relative freedom from danger, risk, or threat of harm, injury, 
or loss to personnel and/or property, whether caused deliberately or by accident.

II.2.2 Culture:

Culture not only influences its members' decisions and practices in the here and now; it impacts individual habits and the decisions and practices of future members as well. It could be defined truly as "the way we do things around here" and "what we do when no one is watching." These common practices can be maintained through generations with little outside management necessary. However, without an overall safety strategy that is well understood by the culture and without process metrics to help the culture continuously measure and improve, most safety cultures fail to reach, much less sustain, excellent safety performance.

Many approaches to improving safety culture also focus on the characteristics of the culture rather than the capabilities. Excellent safety cultures are "can-do" cultures with the vision and tools to continuously improve. They have a strategy and metrics to keep them on track. They develop the characteristics of success as a by-product rather than a precursor of their performance

If your organization desires to achieve safety excellence, you must first develop a deep understanding of what excellence is. Deming called such an understanding "profound knowledge". It not only is a performance goal, but a definition of what excellence is and a process to achieve the goal. It also must have process metrics that facilitate understanding of how excellence is achieved. Excellence cannot be defined simply in terms of short-term results. The definition of excellence cannot inadvertently include results produced by luck and normal variation. Truly excellent safety organizations don't just get to zero; they know exactly how to duplicate and improve their success.

Terry L. Mathis, founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international expert and safety culture practitioner, has worked with hundreds of organizations, customizing innovative approaches to achieve and sustain safety culture excellence. He considered a near miss as the result of a Poor and/or a Bad attitude toward developing an excellent safety culture and Safety Management System, due to lack of caring, concern, control monitoring and training. 
With a great Safety Culture and Safety Management System, Near misses would not or should not really occur. This is achieved by culture, training, management planning, monitoring, identification, attitude changes, commitment and enthusiasm. Thus a Near Miss is/or was merely an accident looking for a place to happen. Hence we can differentiate between near miss and accident as follows:

II.2.3 A Near Miss is an unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness, or damage, but had the potential to do so. Hence we can say a miss that was nonetheless very near.

II.2.4 An accident is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, which did occur, often with lack of intention or necessity. It usually implies a generally negative outcome (Injury, Illness, Fatality, Damages, Unwarranted loss of income, expenditure, production or profits...) which might have been avoided or prevented if the circumstances leading up to it had been recognized, identified and acted upon, before its occurrence. 
Consequently, safety activities should be proactive and not reactive whenever profit is envisaged in an organisation. Thus loses should be monitored.

With a proper safety culture and SMS, safety is drilled into employees in an acceptable and presentable manner similar to the way soldiers are drilled and trained in the military with the necessary discipline concern and care for themselves and their colleagues. 

No employee would work at height without ensuring that the risk assessment (JSA) has been completed and is suitably acceptable and that the required safety measures are in place. Fall prevention equipment is used and where not suitable, fall arrest systems are used.

· Workers shall no more climb ladders without either inspecting them or without support or being tied off. They would not over extend or lean sideways on the ladder.
Remember the «With the Aaargh! It won't happen to me» attitude.  [e-mail] (2012).

We hope to observe as from now, the following attitudes in our company:

The term `safety culture' first made its appearance in the International Atomic Energy Agency's initial report following the Chernobyl disaster (IAEA, 1986). Since then, inquiries into major accidents such as the King's Cross fire (Fennell, 1988), Piper Alpha (Cullen, 1990) and the Herald of Free Enterprise (Justice Sheen, 1987) have found faults in the organisational structures and safety management systems, throwing the importance of safety culture into the spotlight. Safety culture has been defined in a variety of ways but none is standard as will be read below.

The safety culture of an organisation is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies and pattern of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of an organisation's health and safety management (Phil. Hughes et al, 2007). (Pidgeon, 1998) considers it as a constructed system of meaning through which the hazards of the world are understood. Whereas the Confederation of British Industry [(CBI), 1990)] defines safety culture as `The way we do things around here. Meanwhile (Turner, 1989) thinks that it is a set of attitudes, beliefs or norms. According to (Wert, 1986), it is equivalent to safety ethic. Finally, in the layperson's terms, safety culture defines what people do when no one is watching them. ( http://www2.dupont.com).

Meanwhile the UK Health and Safety Executive defines safety culture as « . . . the product of the individual and group values, attitudes, competencies and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization's health and safety programs.» (Ref: HSL/2002/25, 2002). A more succinct definition has been suggested: «Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching».

Every organization has a safety culture, operating at one level or another. The challenges to the leadership of an organization are to: a) determine the level at which their safety culture is currently functioning; b) decide where they wish to take the culture; and c) chart and navigate a path from here to there. 

Followings these proposed definitions of the term `safety culture' we shall proceed with some of its benefits as well as its characterization.