(52c) How Does Workforce Involvement Affect Process Safety Culture? Why Is It so Important?

Even assuming that the equipment and systems in the organization are perfectly designed to ensure process safety, these designs are living systems used by employees. For this reason, these systems must be understandable, usable and accepted by the employees, that is, a culture to which they are attached. It is aimed to reach the employee, in order to ensure, maintain and improve process safety culture in the organization.

Imagine that you have the best and most advanced design process and perfectly constructed systems. Do you think it will reduce the risk of a major industrial accident to zero? Probably, it will help company to reduce risk but since systems will be used according to the understanding and culture of the employees, all systems are connected to people after a while. It is the people in the organization who operate, use, monitor, activate and deactivate these systems at the end of the day. Every person whose organizational safety culture is lacking, even after training and competencies, will appear as a potential weak link. It is aimed to reach the employee, in order to ensure, maintain and improve process safety culture in the organization.

In the accidents experienced in recent years, we see the lack of safety culture until the end. In order to increase and disseminate the culture, it will be very important for field workers to actively participate and own the process. Companies invest in the system and technology, but unfortunately do not make the same effort for safety culture improvement or they do not measure their safety culture level. There are just a few of the cheapest and easiest methods to invest in this safety culture. By blending geographic cultural and understanding differences, this safety culture can be easy to develop and spread. Of course there are many ways to do this but if we consider the whole industries practices; to achieve this, companies should encourage their employees to be more active in the organization. Key point is that focusing "workforce involvement". If this item can be applied successfully, then safety culture will change step by step. Companies can provide or organize items like weekly important event sharing hours, safety themed competitions, site tours and more.

This paper covers how workforce involvement affect process safety culture within the organization.