Alistair Cheyne

Assessing safety culture in offshore environments

This paper discusses a joint industry and UK Health and Safety Executive research project on the assessment of safety culture in offshore environments. It particularly describes the development of a safety culture assessment methodology which is based on a systems approach to organisational culture. This approach combines a number of assessment methods, such as: questionnaires, focus groups, behavioural observations and situational audits, to describe and explore the efficacy of health and safety management systems. The evidence produced by these methods are complementary rather than alternatives and provide different views of organisational health and safety culture by tapping many aspects of the organisations structure, function and behaviour. The assessment techniques have been piloted within collaborating organisations, both within the UK and the Gulf of Mexico. The culmination of the work is the “Safety Climate Assessment Toolkit” which is now published and available for use by managers and safety professionals within the offshore oil extraction industry.

The architecture of employee attitudes to safety in the manufacturing sector

This study examines the relationships between components of organisational safety climate, including: employee attitudes to organisational and individual safety issues; perceptions of the physical work environment and perceptions of workplace hazards; and relates these to self‐reported levels of safety activity. It also attempts to replicate the explicative model derived by Cheyne et al. in a similar study within the manufacturing sector. Data were collected from a large manufacturing organisation using a questionnaire. A total of 708 valid questionnaires were returned and formed the basis for the subsequent analyses. These data showed that a common structure of attitudes to safety issues and perceptions of the work environment can be constructed in line with the previous model, with a few differences, providing some evidence of a sector‐wide safety culture. The strength of employees’ attitudes with regard to safety management and individual responsibility once again played central roles in the model and are consistent with earlier findings. Comparisons are made between the two organisations and mean scores on each of the model components show that there are differences between the two organisations in terms of individual responsibility and personal involvement, as well as levels of safety activity and perceived levels of workplace hazards. The results are discussed in terms of generating general models of attitudes to safety, which in turn may facilitate climate change.

Modelling Employee Attitudes to Safety

This paper describes the modeling of employee attitudes to safety in three industrial sectors operating in the UK. Gauging employee attitudes to safety has become an increasingly important method of appraising human factors issues in many organizations. This study is based on data collected from a large survey (n = 2429) of employee attitudes to safety. It attempts to describe the subjective architectures, or explicative model, of employee attitudes to safety in these sectors by relating these attitudes to their appraisals of commitment to safety in their organization. A comparison of models across sector models is also made. The data support the claim that the architecture of attitudes to safety is, at least in part, dependent on the industrial context, or work environment. Differences were found in factor mean scores as well as differences in the relationships between factors in structural equation models for each sector. The models showed that perceptions of management actions and safety training were ...

Coping processes linking the demands-control-support model, affect and risky decisions at work

As a model of job design, the demands-control-support model (DCSM) indicates that dynamic processes involving individual agency underpin the effects of job characteristics. Specifically, the DCSM indicates that control and social support facilitate effective coping with work demands. To examine such processes in detail, 32 nuclear design engineers participated in an experience sampling study (number of observations = 456). Findings indicate that enacting problem-focused coping by control and support across situations may be beneficial for affect. Problem-focused coping enacted by control was also related to fewer decisions that bear risks to design safety. Although higher levels of risky decisions were related to consistent use of emotional-approach enacted by control coping across situations, this form of coping used in specific demanding episodes was related to less cognitive error and fewer risky decisions two hours later. Emotional-approach enacted through support in specific episodes had a mixed pattern of relationships with outcomes. Theoretically, the findings indicate the importance of understanding the purpose for which job characteristics are enacted. Practically, the findings indicate the importance of shaping both problem-solving and emotional processes alongside job redesign.

Problem Solving and Well-Being Exploring the Instrumental Role of Job Control and Social Support

Enacting social support and job control can enable effective problem solving and protect well-being. The authors operationalized social support used for problem solving as “discussing problems with others to solve problems” (DIS-SP) and job control used to solve problems as “changing aspects of work activities to solve problems” (CHA-SP). Analyses of experience sampling data (N = 191) revealed that DIS-SP was inversely associated with subsequent negative affect and that there were curvilinear relationships between CHA-SP and subsequent levels of negative affect, fatigue, and cognitive failure, such that only high levels of CHA-SP were associated with lower levels of negative affect, fatigue, and cognitive failure. Fatigue was inversely associated with subsequent levels of DIS-SP and CHA-SP. Contrary to expectations, there was a positive association between cognitive failure and subsequent CHA-SP.

Perceptions of safety climate at different employment levels

The notion of safety climate has become central to contemporary theories of occupational health and safety management. Studies of safety climate, focusing on attitudes and perceptions, have suggested that there are variations in both the architecture and intensity of employee attitudes to safety depending on employment level. This paper explores the nature of such differences. The study described here involved the comparison of data, gathered using a self-administered survey instrument, on employee attitudes to safety across three levels (managers, supervisors and general employees). A total of 967 general employees, 123 first-line supervisors and 97 managers from two large manufacturing organizations took part in the study. The data were compared in three ways. First, the factor structure of attitudes in each group was examined, then possible differences between factor scores were investigated and finally the structural relationships between climate factors were compared across groups. Multisample confirmatory facor analysis showed that the factor structures were verv simila across the groups. In terms of the relationships between the factors, however, the architectures illustrated quite different structures This, taken with the range of differences in the intensity of attitudes and perceptions, suggested that, while managers, supervisors and general employees shared the same definition of saferv factors, their perceptions of these factors and how they inter-related proved to be quite different. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of promoting a positive culture for safety.

Linking the demands-control-support model to innovation: The moderating role of personal initiative on the generation and implementation of ideas

The demands–control–support model indicates that workers can use job control and social support for problem solving. We examined whether personal initiative moderated relationships between, on the one hand, job control used for problem solving and social support used for problem solving and, on the other hand, ideas generation and implementation. We operationalized job control used for problem solving as ‘changing aspects of work activities to solve problems’. We operationalized social support used for problem solving as ‘discussing problems to solve problems’. Using an experience sampling methodology, participants provided data for up to four times a day for up to five working days (N= 89). The extent to which people ‘changed aspects of their work activities to solve problems’ was associated with higher levels of ideas generation for people with high personal initiative. The extent to which people ‘discussed problems to solve problems’ was associated with higher levels of ideas implementation for people with high personal initiative.

Occupational safety and health and smaller organisations: research challenges and opportunities

Abstract Despite the prevalence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro organisations, comparatively little is known about how such organisations approach occupational safety and health (OSH). Research has tended to present a negative picture of OSH practices in smaller organisations. This paper discusses some of the challenges to researching OSH in SMEs and micro organisations and how these challenges can be overcome. It draws lessons and experiences from a qualitative study involving 149 structured interviews, nine short-term ethnographies and 21 semi-structured interviews with owners and employees in SMEs and micro organisations from a broad cross-section of industry sectors in the UK, including construction, retail, healthcare, logistics and agriculture. Data from the study suggest that the established boundaries between micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are less meaningful in an OSH context – OSH practices are influenced more by the culture of the organisation, the type of work being undertaken and the sector that an organisation operates in. OSH practices in SMEs and micro organisations tend to reflect more informal characteristics of such organisations, with more emphasis (than many larger organisations) on tacit knowledge, learning by doing and improvisation. Such practices should not necessarily be assumed to be unsafe or incompatible with formalised OSH.

Learning to adapt health and safety initiatives from mega projects: an Olympic case study

Abstract Finding new ways to improve health and safety management in construction continues to generate much interest. Despite a reduction in deaths, injuries and ill health in recent years, UK construction still has high rates of fatal and major injuries compared to other industries. One of the key concerns is the difficulty of organisational learning in construction manifested as reactive responses to health and safety issues. The Olympic Delivery Authority launched a learning legacy programme in conjunction with industry, government and academia to capture important lessons learnt in a number of areas, including health and safety. Communication has long been considered an important factor in the implementation of health and safety initiatives. Previous research has typically focused on programmes run by single organisations. The London 2012 Olympic Park construction project offered a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of safety initiatives and communication across a range of organisations working side by side. It also offered an exciting opportunity to track health and safety messages as they are communicated to the workforce. The main aim of this research project was to evaluate the range of health and safety initiatives used at the Olympic Park in terms of messages communicated to workers, workers’ awareness, attitude and behaviour, and the transfer of knowledge within and outside the Park. A semi-structured inventory was used to survey the workforce (managers, supervisors and workers) using interviews and focus groups on seven Park sites. A follow-up survey was conducted after three months, at which time interviews and focus groups were also held at non-Olympic comparison sites. Data were also collected through the observation of meetings and document review. The data were analysed using template analysis in line with the communication-human information processing (C-HIP) model. The transfer of knowledge into and out of the Olympic Park, and the impact of the communication processes on workers, were key issues identified from the analysis. The results were used to produce industry recommendations that are applicable beyond the realm of a mega project. Important recommendations include, but are not limited to, the important role of the client, the need for planning and the focus on workers’ comprehension and safety behaviour. The most important recommendation was that methods used at the Olympic Park should be used on more traditional projects.

Multilevel models in the explanation of the relationship between safety climate and safe behavior

This study examines the relationships between components of organizational safety climate, including employee attitudes to organizational safety issues; perceptions of the physical working environment, and evaluations of worker engagement with safety issues; and relates these to self-reported levels of safety behavior. It attempts to explore the relationships between these variables in 1189 workers across 78 work groups in a large transportation organization. Evaluations of safety climate, the working environment and worker engagement, as well as safe behaviors, were collected using a self report questionnaire. The multilevel analysis showed that both levels of evaluation (the work group and the individual), and some cross-level interactions, were significant in explaining safe behaviors. Analyses revealed that a number of variables, at both levels, were associated with worker engagement and safe behaviors. The results suggest that, while individual evaluations of safety issues are important, there is also a role for the fostering of collective safety climates in encouraging safe behaviors and therefore reducing accidents.