Background

Conger & Elsea, Inc. (CEI) specializes in the assessment of organizational strengths and weaknesses that influence safety performance, in the development of intervention strategies to address areas identified for improvement, and in the measurement of performance to ensure effectiveness, particularly in organizations that engage in complex operations with the potential to impact employee and public health and safety. CEI has extensive domestic and international experience in operationalizing the definition and measuring, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the organizational behaviors which have the greatest impact on safety performance.

There are many organizations in our society that depend upon human performance to avoid incidents involving significant adverse consequences. The adverse consequences may range from the potential for costly employee injuries to significant penalties for inadequate environmental performance to widespread damage or loss of human life. Industries with the potential for such consequences place heavy emphasis on designing system hardware and software to intercept and mitigate events that could cause adverse consequences. However, it is clear from an examination of various safety-related incidents that human performance, and in particular organizational behavior, has played a dominant role in the root cause of such events. It is generally accepted that without an effective organizational safety culture, a safe working environment is impossible.

An approach that allows objective and quantitative measurement of organizational behaviors that impact overall safety performance is critical for improving future performance and mitigating the risks associated with behavioral change. Such an approach must also provide insights into the elements of the existing culture that are working successfully and direction and guidance for targeted interventions in those areas identified as needing improvement to promote a healthy safety culture and safety conscious work environment. CEI’s methodology has been demonstrated in over 50 different organizations, across five different countries, representing industries as diverse as nuclear power, fossil energy, research, mining, transportation, health care, and chemical reprocessing. It has also been successfully transferred to client organizations for their own use in the implementation, self-assessment, and measurement of safety culture change.

Technical Approach

The first critical step in undertaking a cultural transformation is to understand the status of the organization with respect to these safety culture characteristics. CEI uses a standardized methodology, tailored to the specific needs of the organization to understand the strengths and areas for improvement with respect to the characteristics of a healthy safety culture including a safety conscious work environment.

What is the assessment methodology used by CEI?

A systematic and objective method for measuring, implementing, and monitoring the organizational behaviors associated with a healthy safety culture and safety conscious work environment has been developed and used by CEI.

The diagnostic tools used for assessment typically include:

• Functional Analysis – a review of safety-relevant documentation including organizational charts, recent assessment results, administrative procedures as well as informal interviews and focus sessions to learn more about the functioning of the organization, especially with respect to safety.

• Structured Interview Protocol – consists of a database of interview questions, covering all of the organizational behaviors identified, from which a subset of questions is selected to provide a predefined focus to an interview. The same questions are asked across a representative sample of individuals in the organization at different levels, in different functional positions, and across locations, so that alignment and non-alignment with respect to the organizational behaviors can be identified. Interviews generally last about one hour.

• Behavioral Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) – are administered to those individuals who participate in the structured interviews. The BARS provide an opportunity to quantitatively summarize qualitative data associated with the interviewee’s perceptions of the organizational behaviors that were discussed and are included in the time allocated for the interviews.

• Observations and Behavioral Checklists – Observations supplemented with the use of Behavioral Checklists provide an unobtrusive assessment of organizational behaviors related to processes critical for ensuring safety performance. Checklists have been developed for the critical organizational behaviors identified. Checklists are used while conducting observations of scheduled and unscheduled activities in the organization and provide quantitative and qualitative information about the organizational behaviors observed. Observations are conducted by evaluation team members and do not require any additional resources on the part of the client.

• Organizational and Safety Culture Survey – provides a quantitative and objective way to collect information about the organizational behaviors and topics related to safety culture and safety conscious work environment. The anonymous survey includes questions on organizational culture, attention to safety, coordination of work, communication, work group cohesion, organizational commitment, hazardous nature of work, environment, safety and health and safety conscious work environment issues. This tool is especially effective in reaching a larger and broader sample of individuals than can be contacted through using the interview and observation tools alone. The survey generally takes about 30 minutes to complete and can be administered electronically.

The unique aspect of CEI’s Assessment Methodology is the use of multiple tools to assess each of the organizational behaviors. Information collected on one organizational behavior is obtained through all of the tools just described and convergent data from these tools provides reliability and validity to the conclusions reached about the status of that behavior in the organization.

The data collected from the various tools are subjected to a variety of statistical and qualitative analyses to look for significant differences between groups of interest within the organization and to identify groups within the organization that are most similar to one another on the variables of interest. In addition, the data can be compared to data from other organizations that have a strong interest in and requirement for optimized safety performance.

Products from CEI’s Assessment Methodology typically include:

• An overall organizational profile with respect to the organizational behaviors;

• Identified differences in these behaviors within and between organizational units;

• A baseline safety culture assessment for use in assessment of change initiatives undertaken;

• Highlighted strengths and areas for improvement;

• Prioritized and integrated recommendations to maximize cost-effectiveness;

• Comparisons with an existing client database (over 50,000 individuals) on the standardized tools; and

• Facility debriefing presentation and report documenting results of the analysis.

Culture cannot be transformed if change is imposed from outside the organization. CEI has successfully transferred its approach to client organizations for their own use in the implementation, self-assessment, and monitoring of safety culture change, including applying and analyzing the data obtained from the diagnostic tools. The CEI approach relies upon the commitment and involvement of the management and staff of the client organization to ensure cultural change is internalized. It has generally been the experience of CEI that client organization employees become very invested in and committed to the implementation of culture transformation when they feel an ownership and involvement in the process.