In 2016, Professor Andrew Hopkins urged occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals to abandon safety culture. In the December 2016 edition of OHS Professional magazine ($), he writes further about this position. Several of Hopkins’ statements make the reader stop, sit up and reflect. He writes “What people do is something company leadership can indeed control, …
Occupational health and safety (OHS) spends a lot of time discussing safety culture. The same names keeping cropping up in the discussion illustrating the insularity of the safety profession. But other professional sectors are also interested in safety culture. Recently this blog contained an article about the deconstruction of leadership speeches. The same researchers, Joel …
The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster has faded to become another safety leadership failure to be discussed in the OHS and risk management courses but some new research ($ paywall) in Critical Perspectives on Accounting provides a fresh perspective on BP’s safety culture and leadership prior to the major disaster by deconstructing the speeches of the …
Culture and safety culture are misunderstood and abused terms, according to Professor Andrew Hopkins speaking at the SIA Safety Convention in Sydney today. His perspective as a social scientist reinforces many of the speakers on disruption at yesterday’s sessions. If culture is the characteristic of individuals, culture is transferable or portable outside the workplace but …
In October 2016 the Centre for Sustainable HRM and Wellbeing at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) will be welcoming Professor Wayne Hochwarter. Although, according to ACU, he is a “leading international authority on organisational behaviour research, his name was new to me. ACU advised that Professor Hochwarter has experience in the following areas: Employee entitlement …
The latest episode of the Cabbage Salad and Safety podcast is now available and includes a discussion on the perennial occupational health and safety (OHS) debate over Safety Culture. Siobhan Flores-Walsh and I discuss the role of safety culture and its influence on contemporary safety management. The definition is fluffy and this is part of the … Continue reading “Podcast tackles Safety Culture”
[Guest Post from Dave Robertson of Quadbar] On March 3 2016, the Queensland government released its “Statewide Plan for Improving Quad Bike Safety”. The document covers a wide range of issues but risk controls like substitution and engineering only get small mention. According to the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations, Grace Grace, the government intends … Continue reading “Queensland plans for a safety culture for quad bikes”