Ten Truths about the "Green Revolution"

Employee surveys, brown bag lunches, focus groups, and informal chats are some methods used by managers to find out what their staff is thinking. Often the results are mixed at best. What is your staff thinking? Admit it—you don't really know.

Is there any way of finding out? Electronic surveillance is a bad idea. One chief executive, Mr. Martin of a UK-based manufacturing firm, did the next best thing. He went undercover in his own business for two weeks, disguised as an office worker, completing shifts on 10 different sites. He heard for himself what his people really think. And it was a revelatory experience. They said things to him that they would never have told their managers. Key messages were just not getting through to people.

This "experiment" highlighted a classic management problem. Leaders may know exactly what they want to see happening. They send messages down the management line that employees ought to understand. But somewhere between top management and the shop, something goes wrong. Leadership teams can be scarily ignorant of how badly their wishes have been distorted, and how much unhappiness there is among those on the receiving end.

So let's spin Mr. Martin's experiment as it relates to the safety culture of an air carrier, repair station or any other certificated aviation organization: your organization. How many times have we read or heard senior management say, "We have a very strong safety culture"? Well that line has been used very often and as recently as right after the last major U.S. commercial aircraft accident. The fact is, like it or not, most aviation organizations that espouse having a strong safety culture really don't know. They may turn to their internal databases and show no major events or mishaps in the last 10 years, but that alone, is not an indicator of a strong safety culture.

Getting Started
In order to get to your desired end state, you have to know your starting point. This means you have to conduct a baseline survey to determine your safety culture norms. This can be done in-house, but to gain credibility with your workforce and a non-biased, expert analysis; it is strongly recommended that you bring in an outside consulting group.

What to Measure
You should measure employee and manager perceptions of safety cultural factors that correlate with three safety performance areas:
  1. Organizational factors
  2. Team factors
  3. Safety-specific factors

Expectation
A safety culture assessment has to be viewed as a diagnostic tool, not a survey. The assessment will help identify indicators and areas for improvement, including factors that predict an organization's ability to achieve safety performance excellence as well as other metrics important to the organization.

Results
If properly managed, your assessment results should provide indicators that will help you:

1. Determine and examine management practices, systems and cultural issues that influence safety.
2. Improve your understanding of your current safety culture relative to the culture needed for safety excellence.
3. Ensure that you are focusing on the right areas to improve your safety culture and performance.

Hopefully you won't have to go undercover like Mr. Martin did to understand your safety culture. If you decide to pursue a safety culture assessment, communicate what you plan to do with your employees and encourage their full and honest participation. Once you get your assessment results, you will have a great starting point for resetting your safety culture and moving on to implementing a Safety Management System.