Each time the site director has been confronted with a contradiction between safety and production, he has chosen to favor safety, or on the contrary, he has accepted to “adapt” safety rules to achieve a production target.
Each time an operator reaches a production target but has taken a risk to do so, the management team will ask him not to do it again, or on the contrary may hold him up as a hero.
Managerial messages about quality also discuss safety issues, and those about safety talk of quality or, on the contrary, contradictory priorities abound.
Each time a formal rule is inapplicable, management holds a discussion to adjust the rule to the reality or, on the contrary, they demonstrate “that they don’t want to know”…
Safety culture thus relies ABOVE ALL on the personal commitment of members of the management team to promote the coherence of messages and practices, ensuring that what is done by management is in line with that which is asked of operators.
The ICSI “Safety Culture” working group (2017). Safety Culture: from Understanding to Action. Issue 2018-01 of the Cahiers de la Sécurité Industrielle collection, Institut pour une Culture de Sécurité Industrielle (ICSI), Toulouse, France.
