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Been quite a few safety survey results released today which many of you may have read – these are a tad more interesting and useful I reckon!
Courtesy of Dr Robert Long – see more of his work HERE
Safety Culture Trends in Building and Construction 2012
Results from the Human Dymensions National MiProfile Safety Culture Survey (database of over 10,000 participants over 5 years) demonstrates the following safety culture trends in building and construction. If one ever wondered why the building and construction industry has more than a disproportional share of accidents nationally then these results offer a research-based explanation.
These trends have not varied over the five years that Human Dymensions have been conducting the MiProfile survey. The top ten ranked negative trends are:
1. Misunderstanding safety bureaucracy eg. SWMS evidenced in "tick and flick" sub-culture (eg. safety tools not seen as thinking/conversation tools). 80%
2. A general disposition of overconfidence about risk. 75%
3. Simplistic and naive attitudes to safety values (eg. safety is about just being careful and exercising common sense). 75%
4. Tendency to blame rather than learn about incidents (coming from simplistic understanding of safety values eg. some people are accident prone, accidents happen to people because they are careless). 70%
5. A lack of doubt in the culture associated with high risk activities, linked to point 1 (this result indicates that most employees in Building and Construction do not entertain doubt as an automatic way of thinking about risk). 70%
6. Insufficient positive recognition. 70%
7. A preoccupation and ‘flooding’ workers with the ‘cosmetics of safety’ (eg. PPE and paperwork rather than focusing on actual safety like safety walks and conversations). 70%
8. A general acceptance of fatalism, cynicism, skepticism and punitive solutions to problems. 65%
9. Imbalance and confusion between program, cost and risk trade off. 65%
10. Acceptance of “double speak” (eg. say one thing do another). 65%
The MiProfile safety culture survey offers national benchmarks for organisations including benchmarked safety culture strengths and challenges. Organisations that undertake the MiProfile survey receive a 200 page report complete with analysis by Dr Long and his team. The report includes organisational specific gap analysis and recommendations for safety culture development.
The MiProfile survey methodology and MiProfile survey video can be viewed and downloaded following links on the Human Dymensions website www.humandymensions.com
