The Basics
Safety culture is an organization’s values and behaviors, modeled by its leaders and internalized by its members, which serve to make safe performance of work the overriding priority to protect the workers, public, and the environment. Department of Energy (DOE) expects all organizations to embrace a strong safety culture where safe performance of work and involvement of workers in all aspects of work performance are core values of managers and workers. The Department encourages a questioning attitude by all employees and a work environment that fosters such attitude.
DOE is focused on three key areas to continuously improve its safety culture: safety leadership demonstrated by managers, engagement of employees and workers in doing work safely, and continually improving safety by learning from our and other’s experiences.
The Journey
The DOE process to achieve a strong safety culture will never end because the journey, and what it makes of you, is more important than the destination. The Department recognized the need to improve its safety culture after problems in one of its high-profile projects exposed weaknesses. DOE evaluated many of its locations and learned that the weaknesses were widespread. The Department was particularly disturbed to learn about a chilled atmosphere to raising safety issues and instances of leadership suppressing differing technical opinions. Through a period of reflection and healthy self assessment, DOE recognized areas to improve upon with a focus on leadership, employee engagement, and organizational learning. The Department committed to a safety culture improvement journey.
It started with a training effort reaching thousands of DOE federal and contractor employees senior leaders on how to establish a safety-conscious work environment. That’s an environment in which employees feel free to raise safety concerns (to management or a regulator) without fear of retaliation. Concerns are prioritized based on safety significance, and those concerns are addressed and resolved in a manner that provides transparency. A questioning attitude concerning safety by all employees is supported. DOE obtained help from safety culture experts who provided support and guidance to individual sites. DOE also started measuring its progress in improving safety culture with benchmarking visits to outside organizations that have a mature safety culture, performing additional safety culture self-assessments, and conducting town-hall style meetings to get feedback from the workforce. More training is being planned for front line supervisors and for employees.
DOE is committed at the highest level to improving safety. DOE leaders Secretary Moniz and Deputy Secretary Sherwood-Randall described their Personal Commitment to Excellence in Health and Safety in 2015: “DOE's Safety Culture Improvement Panel, established by the Deputy Secretary on May 18, is an important element of the overall strategy to apply sustained leadership, consistent implementation, and an enterprise-wide cross-organizational focus to continuous safety culture improvement.”
The Safety Culture Improvement Panel is a permanent, high-level organization devoted to promoting DOE safety culture. The panel includes members from across DOE focused on continuous improvement and creating a forum to exchange information and ideas to establish, monitor, and sustain measures supporting a strong safety culture. Feel free explore ongoing DOE safety culture efforts!