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| An effective Safety Culture? | | | Dr.Manzoor Ahmad Yetoo
It is important for ev
eryone in the com
pany, ashore and afloat, to have an understanding and appreciation of the concept of safety culture. For a safety culture to be truly effective, the company must encourage and motivate its personnel to make safety and environmental awareness their highest priorities.
While the ISM Code states that one of its key objectives is to establish a 'safety culture' in companies, it does not actually define the meaning of the term.
However, a safety culture may be described as the values and practices that management and personnel share to ensure that risks are always minimised and mitigated to the greatest degree possible.
In other words, with an effective safety culture, safety and pollution prevention are always the highest priority.
The company and its staff will always, and automatically, think about the implications for safety of every action, rather than simply following safety procedures because they have been imposed from outside. In an effective safety culture, everyone employed by the company, whether a manager, Master or a junior rating, truly believes in and understands the purpose of established procedures, and will think about safety, and the means of improving it, as a matter of course.
A safety culture will also help to eradicate any tendency towards behavioural complacency, when the need to adhere strictly to safety and pollution prevention procedures can be overlooked, either on shore or at sea, because of the misconception that if a particular type of accident has never previously happened it may never occur. Analysis of serious accidents in shipping has demonstrated that the personnel involved are usually highly trained, competent and experienced, and that the underlying cause of the accident, which could have been prevented, was a failure to follow established procedures.
The key to maintaining a safety culture is for all concerned to recognize that it is a matter of enlightened self interest.
The crew will be less likely to be the victims of accidents, and the company can use safety culture as a means of maximising the financial benefit and cost savings that may be derived from implementing effective Safety Management Systems. It is important that companies recognise that investment in safety produces financial savings and is thus not a 'cost'. It is a fact that the improvement of safety saves money as well as lives.
Commitment from the Top
As identified by the ISM Code, commitment from the highest level of the company is vital to ensure that personnel will act safely at all times. Without commitment from senior management the efforts of everyone else in support of the Safety Management System will be wasted.
To develop the commitment of senior management it is essential that they completely understand the full cost of accidents in human, environmental and financial terms.
It may sometimes be questioned why safety should be the first priority when compensation for accidents and pollution is often met by insurance, and many safety measures appear at first sight to be expensive to implement.
However, it isimportant for senior managers and sea staff to appreciate that: oInsurance seldom covers all losses and becomes more expensive following accidents; Criminal penalties for negligence can be considerable;
During repair periods, vessels are not trading; Accidents and pollution fines damage a company's reputation with charterers, shareholders and personnel,including those at sea; Accidents lead to increased scrutiny by flag administrations and port state control inspectors; and Accidents and prosecutions adversely affect the public's perception of the company and of the industry as a whole.
To reiterate, commitment from the top to the fostering of an effective safety culture is a matter of enlightened self interest. Apart from the tragic human costs of death or serious injury, it is estimated that the indirect financial costs of accidents for a company are generally about three times those of insurance claims involving personnel, cargo damage or pollution.
Key Features of an Effective Safety Culture
1.Recognition that all accidents are preventable and only usually occur following unsafe actions or a failure to follow established procedures.
2.Management and personnel who think constantly about safety. An effective safety culture will support a shipboard environment that encourages and requires all on board to proactively consider their own and others' safety.
In this way individual seafarers assume responsibility for safety rather than relying on others to provide it. Through mutual respect, increasing confidence in the value of the safety culture results in a more effective Safety Management System.
3.Always setting targets for continuous improvement, with a goal of zero accidents and ISM Code non-conformities.
There are perhaps three key components to developing an effective safety culture:
Commitment from the top;
Measuring current performance and behaviour; and
Modifying behaviour.
Measuring Current Performance and Behaviour
In order to achieve an effective safety culture it is essential to have the means to monitor the company's current performance in order to identify ways in which safety can be improved. While the SMS required by the ISM Code provides such a mechanism, a readily comprehensible means of monitoring the effectiveness of particular safety regimes and policies is the Lost Time Incident (LTI) rate, which is commonly used across many industries to measure personnel injuries.
A Lost Time Incident is an incident which results in absence from work beyond the date or shift when it occurred. The LTI rate is usually calculated as the number of LTIs that occur during one million working hours, although sometimes different multiples are used.
Following the introduction of the ISM Code, research by P&I Clubs has demonstrated that if the number of personnel accidents is reduced then the number of other accidents, such as those involving damage to property or the environment will also be reduced. The goal of a company should therefore be to reduce the LTI rate to zero.
Companies regarded as being at the cutting edge of safety culture seek to achieve negligible LTI rates.
The most common forms of LTIs are 'slips, trips and falls'. By adopting a culture that will prevent these and other minor injuries from occurring, lives will ultimately will saved.
More strikingly, research has also shown that for approximately every 330 unsafe acts or non-conformities, 30 are likely to result in minor injury. Of these 30 injuries one
is statistically likely to be an LTI. Thus the prevention of 330 unsafe acts is likely to prevent a significant injury. Statistics also suggest that the prevention of 30 LTIs is likely to result with the saving of a life! This concept is illustrated by the safety pyramid diagram : There are a number of performance monitoring techniques that measure different accident data, or which are derived from statutory reporting requirements within national legislation. It is most important that companies employ some means of monitoring their safety performance over time. Many companies find it useful to compare their safety records with those of other similar companies or industries. Members of the Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF), and the Informal Tanker Operators' Safety Forum (ITOSF), for example, compare their safety statistics, as do members of the International Support Vessel Owners' Association (ISOA). It is recognised that conditions existing in different trades cannot be readily compared, but it can be productive to establish informal arrangements with other companies operating in broadly similar circumstances to exchange information and experience.
Modifying Behaviour
A key aim of a safety culture should be to modify the behavior, where required, of company personnel so that they 'believe in safety, think safety and are committed to safety' Developing an effective safety culture based on the concept of continuous improvement, personal commitment and responsibility by all, is a long term process and involves much hard work and effort. Experience gained through the proper implementation of an SMS should result in changes in behaviour, but other measures may also be required. Some companies may wish to conduct 'behavioural assessment' programmes, using outside consultants to oversee changes to the company's safety culture. For many companies, however, other approaches can also be appropriate.
The author is an expert in environment ,project & waste management, occupational safety& health & pollution control and empanelled expert for IRCA).
(You may reach him at manzooryetoo@
yahoo.co.in) |
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