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Dov Zohar 1

Management values, Leadership, and

Safety climate

Dov Zohar, PhD

Israel Institute of Technology

dzohar@tx.technion.ac.il

Summit meeting, Copenhagen, 2007

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Key ideas

Th e r e i s n o t h i n g m o r e p r a c t i ca l t h a n a g o o d t h e o r y (K. Lewin)

Define climate and culture: both are ill-defined

Identify the sources of climate: culture &leadership

Proper metrics as key to managing culture/climate

W h a t g e t s m e a su r e d , g e t s r e w a r d e d h e n c e m a n a g e d

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.

A practical theory for Safety Climate

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What is organizational climate?

Functional view

Climate reflects shared (socially verified) assessmentsof the workplace, i.e. which behaviors are likely to berewarded &supported (collective sense-making)

Such shared perceptions are valuable in ambiguoussituations: competing operational demands (safetyvs. speed), espoused policies vs. enacted practices

Safety climate reveals the perceived priority or valueof acting safely, as assessed and mutually verified byemployees (leaders daily actions as main cues)

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Climate as indication of true prioritieswalk-the-talk test

Use a safety-climate scale whose items refer tosupervisory/peer practices in situations where safetyand production present competing demands

Members pay special attention in such situationsbecause they provide clearest indication of the truepriorities (role behaviors likely to be supported)

Multilevel model: Strategic and supervisory leadersmay adopt divergent priorities (bounded variation),resulting in distinctive group- and org. level climates

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Measuring climateMultilevel model

Safety-climate scales should identify managerial/peer

practices under competing demands (speed vs. safety)Employees discriminate between practices of senior vs.

supervisory leaders (use different cues)

Scale items (Zohar & Luria, 2005):

My supervisor-

Refuses to ignore safety rules when work falls behind schedule

Is strict about working safely when we are tired or stressed

Senior management -

Quickly corrects any safety hazard (even if its costly)

Considers safety when setting production speed and schedules

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Measurement example: Heavy Steel

21 workgroups (Zohar & Stuewe, 2006)

Before-after; Group and Org. Climates

Group Safety Climates

1.001.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

4.50

5.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Department

S

core

1-GL 2-GL avg 1 avg2

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Climate predicts safety performance413 workgroups (Zohar & Luria, 2005)

Org.-levelclimate

Ave. Groupclimates

Operationssafety

0.41** 0.38**

0.44**

Strength

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A practical theory for Safety Culture

Where does climate come from?

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What is organizational culture?Scheins 3-tier model

Deep tier: Shared assumptions about world - humannature, work, management, safety (deeply buried)

e.g. Safety as injury; Safety as compliance (discipline)

Surface tier: Wide range of visible expressions, orartifacts (easy to observe but difficult to interpret)

e.g. Many elaborate safety rules; Rule-based training

Middle tier: Espoused values/beliefs, justify companygoals &policies (but discrepancies create ambiguities)

e.g. Safety as no. 1 vs. Safety without disrupting efficiency

Yet, without metrics, culture remains unmanageable(current state of affairs)

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Leaders create cultureOperational framework

Daily verbal exchanges between leader & members isa key source of social influence (concrete task issues)

Symbolic content or sub-text, as perceived by therecipient, identifies deeper culture-shaping messages:

1. True priorities among competing goals, demands2. Formal policies vs. informal recognition (discrepancies)

3. Espoused vs. enacted values (openness vs. authority)

4. Words vs. actions (e.g. empowerment vs. control)

Multilevel model: Senior leaders create org. culture;Group leaders create sub-cultures for each unit

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Improvement of org. culture- it is all about the metrics

Symbolic content (sub-text) of daily leaders exchangesoffer an observable culture metric (% messages):

Recipients as human detectors: use a tailored checklistof perceived sub-textual cultural messages

Quality-control methods: use random sampling ofexchanges (by consent; agreed sampling framework)

Immediate analysis of each sampled exchange, usingrecipients as interpreters (3-min. process)

Remote measurement: use cell-phone &internet tocollect data, analyze it, and offer bi-weekly personal FB

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Measure culture with CEO messages (Marble Works)- Metrics reflect perceived leader messages

-

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

- ( (, ( ( ( ) , ( , ) ,

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Measure culture with lower level messages- Metrics reflect daily priorities by subordinates

- II

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

, , , , , -

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Meeting the safety culture challenge

Senior leader exchanges can change safety culture:

Modify basic assumptions: from safety-as-injury tosafety-as-(ongoing) reliability

Reverse the priority/utility due to the high incentivepower of frequent recognition/attention: Usafe>Uunsafe

Leverage culture to improve safety climate as the key

mediator of employee performance (coffee-filter model)

What gets measured, gets managed (culture & climate)

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Safety culture/climate model

Safety climate mediates org. culture and employeesbehavior it explains 22% of injuries (meta-analysis)

Implementation process

Actions &

Discussions

Employees

perceptions:

Climate

% Safe

operations

Injury rate

Lost days

Disability

Environment

design/ hazards

Management

True Values:

Culture

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.

Applications and interventions

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Intervention example: Oil refinery

Safety exchanges & unsafe operations (%)

0

10

2030

40

50

6070

80

1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41

Weeks

%

Supervisory InteractionsElectric work

Movement in zones

Base-line Intervention Follow-up

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Steel CompanySafety exchanges & safety compliance (%)

T o ta l B -S h o p : D a ily S a fe ty E x c h a n g e s (D S E s )

v e r s u s S a fe O p e r a t io n s (h o u s e k e e p in g )

1 0

1 5

2 0

2 5

3 0

3 5

4 0

4 5

5 0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

R e p o r ti n g W e e k

%S

afetyExchanges

4 0

4 5

5 0

5 5

6 0

6 5

7 0

7 5

8 0

%S

afeOperations

% S a fe t y E x c h a n g e s % S afe O pe ra t io n s

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Intervention: Fiber-plasticsTwo years later

Adjust Frequency data (*10); Severity data (*100)

0

10

2030

40

50

60

7080

90

100

Injury Frequency

Rate*

Injury Severity

Rate*

% Reliable

Exchanges

% Reliable

Operations

2002 2003 2004

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Conclusions

Practical theory: safety climate and culture can be

defined in a manner that reduces ambiguity Good measurement: use theory-based measurement

scales as the key for research and applications

Third age of safety: shifting from worker complianceto leaders daily practices

Leaders create culture climate: any real changedepends on the companys senior leadership

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.

Thank You