Moving Towards an Injury-Free Culture

DEKRA Insight Australia Pty Ltd
Sunday, 01 December, 2019


Moving Towards an Injury-Free Culture

Organisations that value their employees are committed to providing a safe working environment. These leaders enable and support their people to recognise and reduce exposures day after day. Despite these efforts, workers continue to face life-altering injuries or fatalities at unacceptable rates, highlighting the underlying importance and need to understand the root cause of such unchanged exposure levels within organisations.

Measuring the culture of an organisation is important when determining safety performance. Cultural assessments offer an accurate picture of the organisation’s current culture and safety climate with various scales helping to predict performance outcomes. All organisations have their way of doing things which is why it can be difficult to understand the levels and elements of exposure within a complex system.

The DEKRA Organisational Cultural Diagnostic Instrument (OCDI) is not a perception survey. The OCDI differs from traditional surveys because it is the only instrument that is:

  • Precise — The R&D behind the OCDI ensures that it is a reliable and valid instrument.
  • Predictive — It measures the nine organizational culture factors that have been shown to predict safety performance.
  • Prescriptive — Because it’s predictive, it’s prescriptive. The results from the OCDI provide the leadership team with the data they will need to take actions that will improve safety performance. Understanding your organisation’s specific cultural strengths and opportunities that impact safety allows leaders, in partnership with DEKRA, to develop a strategy and action plan focused on improving safety for the entire organisation.
  • Behavioural — Behaviours (not perceptions) impact safety performance. Leaders will need to create organisational and individual action plans that change behaviours if they are going to change the safety culture and safety outcomes.
     

DEKRA’s assessment methodology leverages two powerful mechanisms, a diagnostic tool and focus groups and interviews. The diagnostic provides a deep understanding of organisational relationships while the interviews provide a context around behaviours, actions, issues, decisions and systems that contribute to strong relationships and culture.

Moving culture in the right direction can be one of the most challenging tasks organisations face. When it has the desired tools and actions for developing a culture that reflects “safety is who we are”, organisations who take these steps, are likely to see:

  • Employees that are engaged and proudly “own” safety for both themselves and their co-workers.
  • Exposure reduction for long-term success as well as decreasing injury rates.
  • Additional improvements extending beyond safety such as increased productivity, greater job satisfaction, and reduced absenteeism.
  • Enthusiastic leaders that adopt a transformational leadership style which supports safety.
  • Stronger work relationships that thrive in an environment that is feedback-rich.
     

An in-depth assessment will create a clear roadmap and action plan for an organisation to actively demonstrate their organisational value for safety.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/navee

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