Injury. Are people behaving safe at our sites, do we need to understand this? What is influencing people to behave unsafe? How can we develop safety culture? Why safety systems and management are unable to develop safety culture? These questions are answered in BBS programs. Are behaviours measurable? Is human behaviour the root cause of incidents and accidents? These questions are solvable.

Safety cultures endure when they are part of an overall successful organizational culture Paoletta (2020). Longterm supportive safety culture implementation helped sites that had history of fires and fatalities to develop culture for saving lives and also providing financial safety. Safety culture definitely improves when organizations involve all people in the process of risk control by observation and spot-correction. BBS is a 'skill upgrade' for all employees being invested by companies to practice on job for daily risk control as an integral part of a business strategy. Adhoc-ism in longterm safety culture management by the employers is a high risk proposition for business sustainability Kaila (2021). Safety culture supports and pushes the business to the next level.

Almost all Illnesses are treatable as of now when identified at an early stage, so is true about at-risk behaviors at sites, then why suffer from incidents and accidents and lose lives and businesses. Much less than one percent of organizations in India follow planned intervention of behaviouralizing longterm safety culture implementation, hence the scope for fires and fatalities continue, as a result of which the country's businesses suffer huge losses. It needs to be understood that there is no shortcut to development of supportive safety culture.

Vasudha Pharma BBS case study 2021-22: Within 6 months, by training 30 employees, created a safety culture involving corporate leaders, site head, HODs, included second level in steering team, spreading a tool of spot- correction Figure 1 all over the plants of 600 workforce besides EHS department. Spot-correction means if any at-risk behaviors are not dealt well with immediate response, both people and business are at stake. The Incidents reduced significantly month by month, and near-miss reporting increased. Barriers to safety were identified and rectified regularly. Holding weekly meetings, rewarding best observers, the company is now taking BBS forward to families, schools and surrounding plants.

Figure 1 spot-correction mechanism (Capture, Connect and Correct) adopted by TKAP

 

The organisational behaviour culture drives the accidents that injure or harm many thousands. To eradicate at- risk behaviours, safe behaviours have to be appreciated that are created by people of the plant everyday as observers of the safety culture. There is an urgent need for reforms in safety culture of every plant that can only be people based. Most safety professionals are trained in safety systems, not in safety culture development, which is need of the hour, this article provides inputs in this direction Harbans (2021). Safety culture is that how you can serve the humanity without incidents and accidents, not how much profits you can make from your businesses. Traditionally, the CEO of a company should assure people at site that they are safe each day. If he can not do this to the workforce, then perhaps he can not run the business operations safely. But in BBS approach implementation by the company, it is the other way that each person at site assures each other that they are safe. On the other side, most of the Indian safety professionals in the plants are still pursuing with management with respect to cost of safety training, and finding it difficult to convince the top managers for long term initiatives for safety culture.

A case : One query and reply from the Management: what is the percentage of unsafe Observation that can be categorised as a Concern rather than Hot Spot? I feel 2% and less can be a concern rather than Hot Spot. Now we are tracking Technical Hotspots and General Hotspots separately. It would be wrong to understand in terms of percentage. You know, a single observation of at-risk behaviours can be very critical. For any observer, Each unsafe observation is a Concern for immediate correction, that’s all. Percentage of at-risk behaviours is to be understood in terms of goal setting for each department Head. According to Pavan Rao of Sembcorp Nellore: Difficulty is that HODs want to duck under the Statistics and Management is monitoring without forcing HODs to act. It is a Tricky execution bias (Dharm Sankat). Drifting from dependent safety culture at all levels is a reflection of negotiation between production and safety. The author handled in one such situation at GAIL in a monthly follow up visit when ED, GMs, DGMs, HODs were in such a similar conflict at one big site. It was discussed and sorted out. BBS is a concern for correction, let's not get lost in its statistics or terminology. Risk is risk whether 1% or 2%, risk is never small, its effects are critical. If HODs do not understand this, managements do not wake up on this, incident will find its way there. Let's raise voice on it.

Long-term zero-risk safety culture is an interaction among the people over time, months and years. Zero risk management involves lots of behavioural dynamics from top to bottom, as well as associates. But it is also interesting, insightful, as well as emotional struggle to achieve it. In this regard, many organizational antecedents need focus. BBS intervention provides an experience of change within an organizational safety culture through the processes of observations and spot-corrections being intervened by employees on each other, and once this intervention becomes a routine, and employees begin to accept, it gradually turns into an integral part of the company values Kaila (2021).

Many seniors in industry give decorative safety speeches just to take corporate mileage or lip service, it doesn't serve the purpose of building safety culture at sites. Several questions keep bothering many of us in industry. Some of the basic questions are: Why people do not understand the difference between safe and unsafe behaviour? Is perfect safety culture possible? Why managers do not get involved in safety implementation? Why safety observations are not discussed at sites?

 

 

 

 

 

2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

 

Objectives

Review of literature revealed that the safety culture management is a relevant, critical and major concern for companies. In this direction, it is good idea to explore various learnings of field professionals especially during Covid19 scenario when HSE culture is a real concern, hence research objectives were set :

1)     To explore basic questions on longterm supportive safety culture.

2)     Features of Companies not empowering their workforce for performing safety implementation.

3)     Competencies gap amongst the safety professionals.

4)     Major roadblocks in HSE culture decisions making.

5)     Factors to advance the success of longterm supportive safety culture.

6)     To formulate recommendations.

 

Sample

603 HSE, medical, education, management, mental health professionals. For this research a total of 1100 people were approached out of which 603 completed an action field survey with the researcher. These research participants had been implementing behavioural safety culture at their work sites. The research participants included, the CEO, Directors, Managers, Heads of Departments, Safety Professionals belonging to the public and private industrial sectors, including chemicals, construction, gas, power and steel, across Indian locations.

 

Types of Data & Data Collection Method:

Both primary data (interviews, discussions) and secondary data (incident and accident rates) were collected. Interviews based on open-ended questions and personal in-depth discussions were conducted through remote data collection techniques over 5-months (during August-December 2021) from diverse locations and organisations in India. The sampling method used was a non-random convenience sampling. Participants were selected from the researcher's contact list, invited by WhatsApp, and email to complete the online survey.

 

Research Design

This is a concept building, innovative and exploratory research design at the behest and involvement of field professionals as being study participants, using qualitative descriptive framework.

 

Data Analysis Techniques

This study is part of an ongoing interdisciplinary intervention of behavioural science, management and industrial safety disciplines, and part of a national longitudinal action survey in India. Crucial element in this research was data collection conducted by means of controlled interviews and questionnaire surveys in these organizations. Their responses to questions related to safety cultural aspects were collated.

 

During the process of thematic content analysis using the transcribed data, Ten global themes were identified from the qualitative data, are discussed below:

·        Basic Questions on longterm supportive safety culture

·        Reactive safety culture

·        At-risk behaviours, Observers’ collective voice and Leadership

·        Religion, Spirituality, Festivities for Safety at sites

·        BBS is an implementation of safety with feeling for the other:

·        Features of Companies not empowering their workforce for performing safety implementation

·        Competencies gap amongst the safety professionals

·        Major roadblocks in HSE decisions making

·        Spot-implementation of BBS approach by top leaders, and

·        Factors to advance the success of longterm supportive safety culture.

 

Discussion /Findings on Ten Themes and Managerial Implications

"Supportive safety culture is a safety vaccination for one and all", a plant manager said during an online session. Leaders need to change their safety model before it is too late, they need not worry for the criticism for what you are doing. Change anyways brings criticism, you need to bring up the positive change. First learn it yourself before you propel it in your organisation for success. In safety culture development, everyone is either a source of harm or saving from it, which is decided by his spot-correction or ignoring of at-risk behaviors around him.

Total safety culture depicts itself when safety culture, work culture and lifestyle are integrated. Safety culture can be simply understood as equal to the total workforce divided by the number of observers recording daily observations. Observer is not really developed unless he/she is recording and sharing daily observation with others.

Sometimes, even seniors or your colleagues, take it as an offence or insult, when observers ask for compliance to safe behaviours. For various reasons in India, safety and health is at low preference in our families. Though some change is visible due to COVID-19 with lives lost.

The basic flaw is that the safety standards have not been established. Jugad (common sense practice) systematised has become a standard in industry. Hence in the journey of safety, (definition, systems, culture, its management), many unresolved questions are left on the behavioural risk management for safety culture implementation and possible solutions are being explored as below.

 

Theme 1

Basic Questions on longterm supportive safety culture

In India, the employers’ pocket size decides the safety size for employees. Whether employees deserve safety system or culture or no safety is decided by how much profit comes to the company. Care comes second, it is money first, not safety first. That is the bottom line. So the future of businesses is at risk, as without safety, the business does not get sustained. The at-risk behaviours at site are life threatening to employees and business threatening for employers. It is preventable with BBS culture. Switch to a new culture for sustainable future of our businesses caring employees' safety right. Let's change the OSH scene together. Sometimes, it is great difficulty for even leaders to convince some people due to certain contingencies at sites that HSE violations are not acceptable to practice. It is to be realised that at-risk behaviours in industries are unsafe to the citizens in the civil societies, sometimes disabling, injurious, even fatal. Safety is a moment of spot-correction, Rest is in scope of an incident. Spot-correction is a function of one and all to achieve safety culture. There seems to be a bleak future of businesses if they are not establishing longterm supportive safety culture at their sites. Though a large number of companies believe in this, yet they do not appear to be acting accordingly.

Basic 12 Questions on longterm safety cultures that emerged during discussions were:

1)     Does Investing in Supportive Safety Cultures Pay? How would observers respond in a split-second when an incident can take place, or how would national safety culture impact at-risk behaviors of people at site?

2)     Why Ideologies on safety cultures vary across the industries in terms of practices?

3)     Why Industry is confused between the mental safety and behavioural safety?

4)     What are the Periodical Impact Assessments for Safety Culture in Organisations for Improvement?

5)     How to understand the features of companies that do not empower and enable their workforce for performing safety implementation, and to provide a framework for facilitating plants to performing safety implementation by their workforce?

6)     Why do not the corrections of at-risk behaviours become permanent safety culture after few observations, how long would it take? What is the involvement of HODs in this aspect? What is the response of the corporate on this issue? What is inter-relationship between corporate, plant management, HODs, observers for achieving permanent safety culture?

7)     A well-planned BBS approach opens ones’ mind 360 degree about how safety is redefined, measured, and achieved as a company culture. But some people at site do not wish, a reactive safety culture to go away, why?

8)     Why people do not understand the difference between safe and unsafe behaviour? Why managers do not get involved in safety implementation?

9)     Why safety observations are not discussed at sites?

10) Why there are competencies gap amongst the safety professionals to convince their own managements for longterm safety culture solutions?

11) Why HR departments did not realise and fill up this competency gap? Are our training colleges or institutions insufficient to train the safety professionals for the required competencies?

12) How human factor and safety culture are related? Is it that the exponential value of human factor reflects in safety culture?

 

The major question, the corporates need to ask themselves is: are you ready to develop a long term interdependent safety supportive culture: just find out below:

1)     It should take between 1-4 years depending upon your workforce size.

2)     It would transform safety culture from reactive to interdependent safety culture.

3)     The journey would involve everyone from top to the last person at site.

4)     This would involve everyone to become an active BBS observer.

5)     This would help measure at-risk behaviors at site.

6)     This would involve HODs to drive the safety culture.

7)     This would help create a structure to monitor BBS score over weeks/months.

8)     This would need to link safety culture with EHS policy and PMS in the organization.

9)     It would require expert guidance to handhold, support and review progress.

10) It would need continued management engagement.

 

The above questions of industry delve upon the critical concerns that impact safety culture in organisations. According to the Institute for Industrial Safety Culture, safety culture is a set of ways and behaviours being shared within an organisation which aim to manage the most critical risks associated with its activities Veľas et al. (2021).

 

Theme 2

Reactive safety culture

Most of the serious incidents in India took place when professional safety recommendations were ignored and delayed for implementation, which is also true even today. A reactive culture indicates that the safety systems are piecemeal and develop only in response to adverse events and regulatory requirements Halligan et al. (2013). By not empowering our workforce to speak up for unsafe behaviour at sites, our industry kept suffering from incidents and accidents. Why industry professionals are not giving up the reactive safety culture? According to Pavan Rao of Sembcorp Nellore, “it is their comfort zone and they don’t want to take pain”. Dr Balkrishna of Gunnebo said, “It may be due to low thinking mindset, and heroistic behavior personality, old thinking, like abhi tak kuch hua nahi, hum yahi kaam karte hai bahut saal se, low education qualifications etc.” KK Sharma of DCM Shriram stated that the reactive people at sites are those who are self-centered and need to demonstrate their power and also on the other side, few needs attention/guidance/instructions for necessary task to perform due to their upbringing/culture from where they come from. In a weak or reactive safety culture, safety is an afterthought, whereas in a positive safety culture, safety is pursued beyond industry standards

ISHN (2021). A K Dang of NTPC Safety Academy stated that the Behaviour Based Safety plays an important role in prevention of accidents and intervening behavioural science through which the site management empower their manpower including contract workmen to be active and not reactive in identifying at-risk behaviours to achieve the mission of Zero Accident. The study professionals suggested that the plants and sites are heading toward achieving the 12 goals set for supportive safety culture as below (Figure 6).

Figure 6: 12 goals set for supportive safety culture

 

Theme 3

At-risk behaviours, Observers’ collective voice and Leadership

The influence of group collective voices is greater than the fear of any form of punishment. At-risk behaviours are the wake up call just before incidents occur. BBS Observers' collective voice at site are an epitome of corporate safety culture which needs to prevail in positive sense. Observers training is most important, and they need to understand their daily observation in terms of company’s safety culture. Moreover, Safety at site would not suffer, even when safety officers are on leave, as long as our BBS trained observers are active to care for at-risk behaviors. “Yes, we are moving towards this”, a plant head said. In this regard, some experiences by the study participants are expressed below:

Peer group implementation of BBS would be helpful by support from companies that implemented supportive safety culture successfully mentoring other plants to give them online guidance and handholding in order to fast track culture of safe behaviours across sites.

Regulated Surprise Monthly BBS rounds by the individual steering team members across the site would help support and strengthen the longterm safety culture. The visible leadership observation daily rounds are important in reinforcing supportive safety culture at sites.

Personal and organizational safety behaviors are significant in building safety culture. We are reducing our personal risk by adopting BBS and being a part of it actively, people would observe and look after you. In terms of gaining increased risk control, train everyone as observer. 77 percent HSE professionals agreed that it takes only one observation to stop any incident, it may be of yours! Isn't it, so why not train everyone for the same at site.

Consider plants, sites, corporates for behavioural safety awards that have trained 100 percent of their manpower including contractors staff as active observers who are correcting at-risk behaviors on daily basis for developing supportive safety culture.

Nearly 90% of this study participants expressed that be careful, in India, we don't measure well. It doesn't support zero-harm policy, if you don't measure at-risk behaviours at site work areas. If you don't measure, you don't understand it well. Beware, it may give you surprise. Then the question arises, whether a BBS intervention is useful without its measurement aspect. The answer is yes, but it is useful in a limited way, and the risk control is not covered fully, as it is not understood without measurement.

89 percent HSE professionals agreed that we need corporate safety leaders more than the safety professionals who can lead safety implementation passionately as a core value. This reflects that the dependent safety culture exists at sites to a greater extent. We introduced leader member exchange quality as a central predictor of leaders’ support for employees’ ideas for constructive change Urbach and Fay (2020).

It is noticed that leaders rarely do observation rounds by themselves rather they present observations done by their observers down the levels. Also the hot-spots of at-risk behaviors trigger incidents, and spot-correction of at-risk behaviors is done, but behavior needs to be changed by regular risk-based conversations (RBC). This is a serious feedback to sustain safety culture at work sites. Successful longterm safety culture management essentially requires a sustained untiring leadership to guide and direct the involvement of all concerned from top to the last persons at sites. Dedicated leaders could see the vision of transformed safety culture in terms of safe behaviours being reinforced by everyone, and reflecting its vibrations into business excellence. .

 

Theme 4

Religion, Spirituality, Festivities for Safety at sites are Important Forms of Multicultural Diversity. Many companies witness this during festivals throughout the year as many company-wide such activities (such as Vishwa Karma puja, Ganesha festivals, Christmas, Id) are performed involving everyone, and safety messages are communicated by seniors. These group activities bring people together from different culture. If people feel spiritually safe, they are ready to care for others to prevent from risks at workplaces. When people respect each others’ spiritual values, they bond well to nurturing the spirit of safety in brotherhood Keenan (2017).

When you say "Hare Krishna", you create a bonding with your people at sites. HSE beliefs and spiritual beliefs are linked as both are humanly grounded Kaila (2021). Accommodating differences with respect to religious beliefs and spirituality in the workplace fosters establishing a psychologically safe work environment SHRM (2020). On 14th December, every year is the Gita Jayanti in India, the day Krishna spoke Gita to Arjuna. People visit and pray to The Lordships for their family's safety and well-being.

HSE culture development depends upon an involved emotional response of everyone around there at site. According to a senior HSE professional, Pavan Rao at Sembcorp, “We had a LTI where we felt that Supervision of Our Engineer was not sufficient. Always Front Liners are at greater risk because of their proximity to hazard and less awareness and experience. We saw Rakhee Festival was near. Hence we planned and organised special Tool Box Talk. We are responsible for your safety and you are responsible for mine and your colleagues safety. This message hit the core. We will evaluate on continuous basis Across both plants. We coined a word Suraksha Bandhan”. Culture is developed over a decade, not months, keep your focus, training has to be perpetual, and continuous. Safety culture is a path, not a destination. I am the safety culture, you are, we are, all are the part of safety culture. Creating a positive safety culture within an organization has shown to dramatically reduce the rate of injuries and accidents in the workplace.

 

Theme 5

BBS is safety implementation with feeling for others

Managements keep HSE systems in place. Importantly, they need to ensure that the behaviours related to these systems are activated. We need to achieve the Unity of industry's action for HSE cultural change. Behavioural safety implementation is an elevation of Care to Culture from workplace to anyplace Kaila (2021). Spot- appreciation of safe behaviours and spot-correction of at-risk behaviors by observers are equally important in safety culture improvements.

According to a manager, “my promise to humanity: I shall keep on developing best safety culture for saving lives from any incidents so that they also can contribute to the service of mankind”. A director said, “BBS flight is ready, just check in, stay onboard, enjoy inflight facilities of zero-harm and zero-incident, destination is safety culture”.

Behavioural safety is a change implementation process through a well planned intervention as a subject of applied behavioural science involving all stake holders for risk control in personal, social and work settings towards a mission of saving life and business by nurturing mentors and observers along with result-oriented bold leaders. Behavioural safety approach proves excellent for those who are aware of its concept, process, roadmap steps, outcomes and moreover its timelines of cultural changes. Figure 2 indicates that organizational behavioural changes are achievable over the years.

Figure 2 organizational behavioural changes

 

NSC National Safety Month 2021: Week 3 – It’s Vital to Feel Safe on the Job. To have a truly comprehensive safety program, managers need to include psychological safety Barnes (2021). A BBS survey across Indian locations revealed the following:

For corporates, safety is an agenda, for contractors workmen, safety is zindagi (life). There's radical difference and difficulty in safety implementation results.

90% of observation teams at sites are still focusing on unsafe conditions, not at-risk behaviours. It should be the other way. The company needs a planned intervention of behavioural safety approach.

Executives at sites are focused on outcomes, not safe outcomes. They need to tune their eyes for safety, and focus on BBS which is going beyond risk assessment and control.

Site head writes thank you note every month to all workforce on their behavioral safety observations contribution to promote safe behaviours daily at work sites. Site-heads also ensure retraining of observers.

We go for global examples, we need to make system Indian, local, economical and involve non-safety professionals such as maintenance, operations and quality, to sustain safety cultures by diversifying it. Business sustainability is an outcome of excellence in safety culture.

Rightly said by a veteran safety professional during a BBS course Inauguration, just by expecting a certificate, or having a BBS presentation, one can't think of creating a safety culture, its a committed action with expert mentoring Kaila (2021). This mistake is often done, beware. A safety professional adds, It is like having a valid driving license and not following Road safety rules.

Another seasoned professional emphasized that fortunately our commitment to Zero Harm has taken us into lot of research which has paid dividends in best safety culture.

One of the corporate HSE Heads was not responding for months, I just called him to know his well being, he lost his young son and daughter in Delhi in 2nd wave, son was an engineer (23), daughter was doctor (25), it happened in around May 2021. We need to care for seniors as well.

 

Theme 6

Companies not empowering their workforce for performing safety implementation

Companies can ensure success in their safety procedures by building a culture of safety (Vos, 2021). If you really wished to create a strong safety culture, you must listen to every observer who developed an emotion into the heart of every observee to behave safe who was behaving unsafe Kaila (2021).

The subject needs to be addressed as how to conduct BBS process as a "longterm planned intervention of applied behavioural science". When you don't spend on safety, you spend on incidents. Low safety budget is equal to high incidents budget. It is important to know the pitfalls on the journey of turning around the sick safety culture by mentors addressing the safety culture engagement reflecting on the real-world experiences with measurable safety culture transformations ISHN (2021).

There is a need to include safety culture in personal life of leaders for effectively implementing behavioural safety at sites. If you do not emphasise or spend on safety and health in personal life, you tend to do the same at workplaces in corporate decision making for HSE aspects. If you leave safety to chance and complacency, it would lead to incidents. There are managers who encourage employees when they complete their tasks with unsafe approach and save time. Negative encouragement produces resistance and barriers for safe behaviours at sites. Justifying unsafe behaviour is an anti for safety culture, which is demonstrated to manage target pressures without adequate pre-planning.

Ten Features Table 1 would help measuring and building the action plan for companies in empowering their workforce for performing safety implementation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1 Ten Features of companies not empowering their workforce for performing safety implementation (mark each item Yes or No)

low on the concept of of psychological safety for workforce. low on the values of human compassion and empathy. low on corporate social responsibility. low on corporate care as a core value. low on international business operations. low on leading indicators but high on lagging indicators. high on reactive, and dependent safety culture. low on independent and interdependent safety culture. low on their leadership safety consciousness. low on safety implications on business and employees.   Scoring: The number of Yes means, the company is not empowering their workforce for performing safety implementation. Indicate action plan for improvement based on number of Yes.

 

Theme 7

Competencies gap amongst the safety professionals

Competency development is a life long process. The experienced HSE professionals feel that they are competent but the leadership skills are lacking at the top leaders for their commitment and will to spend on safety solutions. Whereas the corporate managements feel that the safety professionals lack the required competencies. On the other hand, there is an emphasis on new skills such as human behavioural aspects of safety culture development, which are neither taught in basic educational institutions, nor the corporates are equipped to handle it, hence specialists role is felt for such organisational interventions to develop organisation-wide safety culture. The job profile of the HSE professionals seems to be changing requiring new set of skills. Safety professionals can not be held responsible for lacking competencies as corporate leaders, HR managements themselves are not safety-minded. Hence it is an organisational management issue. The MD/ CEO / top leaders need safety conscientiousness.

Why there are competencies gap amongst the safety professionals to convince their own managements for longterm safety culture solutions? Why HR departments did not realise and fill up this competency gap? Are our training colleges or institutions insufficient to train the safety professionals for the required competencies?

Above queries were raised to 256 HR and safety professionals in Indian corporates. Responses indicate the following:

80% of the study respondents agree that it is true of young safety engineers, and it is a great query for present times. However, the response patterns of safety professionals emerged in terms of the following perspectives and recommendations from a variety of sectors such as chemical, construction, gas, petroleum, steel:

 

 

 

Perspectives on competencies gap

·        Safety professionals are having competency, but since top management is not focusing primarily on safety, in some of the organisations, safety gets compromised.

·        HR department, realising need of safety competency, however they act as per management requirements.

·        There is a legal shortfall.

·        Safety culture is not nurtured since childhood, in our education system.

·        There are so many factors that go into the development of competency in an individual. Like for example age, gender, education, geography, local influences, family background, surroundings etc. These factors are never considered on the whole while determining competency. Besides every individual has unique culture, organisation has their own culture and hiring authorities have their own culture. These cultures are not complimentary to each other but actually conflicting. Due to lack of uniformity in judging competency, there always tends to be gap which is never filled.

·        This is because safety officers are scared about their job. There is an inadequate support.

·        There is lack of safety culture in the company.

·        Management people are grown up with less safety culture environment. They could not realise what is the outcome of not following safety.

·        At DCM Shriram, not only HR, even Top Management is also very much concerned.

·        At Jindal Steel, safety professionals raise this as important issue to convince HR to bridge the gap.

·        At GAIL, it is not because of competency gap amongst Safety professionals but because of deficit in leadership traits amongst top leaders.

·        Most senior HSE professionals felt that the HR department has outsourced all duties.

·        Safety department thinks about safety norms but management thinks about production.

·        Mostly HR don't address this issue as they are more inclined towards management SEWA (servitude).

·        90% of the organizations perceived that everything is related on cost saving for companies.

·        EHS Corporate Director commented as follows:

·        It is due to incompetency of safety professionals also who sometimes are not having courage to justify need of safety improvement. A true safety professional can drive safety as value to business before anyone else. However mantra is the receptive management has to acknowledge the value and extend support by owning the responsibility of driving safety like any other function.

·        AMNS safety professional underlined that Management does not want Safety culture solutions as a part of safe production, and HR department does want to realise that Safety culture is a part of my responsibility as well.

·        ONGC feels that its a Big question. May be "Boss is boss" culture.

 

A multinational company’s Head emphasized that the world is constantly changing and safety is no different. World is moving from Industrial Safety to a New View of safety. Concepts like Human Factors, Human Performance, Psychological safety etc are New areas. Safety professionals are not trained on these perspectives of HSE. The job profile of the HSE professionals seems to be changing globally requiring new set of skills Burdick (2019). To update competencies for safety culture, a BBS course by NITIE was initiated recently in 2021. Nearly 30 organizations across India with 110 participants have shown positive changes in the safety culture in data form as they implemented BBS Kaila (2018).

 

Theme 8

Major Roadblocks in HSE decisions making

Is management the biggest roadblock to safety? sometimes companies stash their safety program rather actively prioritising it within the work operations. Safety professionals get frustrated, when companies mistreat safety, then the safety professionals are not to be the scapegoat MySafetySign (2021).

What are the major roadblocks in HSE decisions making in Indian corporates? The safety decisions depend upon procedures of finance, HR, procurement, site management, HODs, safety department and so on. Most of these people are not safety sensitive due to cultural and educational backdrop in which HSE is not emphasised. Hence the decisions are delayed, and many people have to die or disable due to lack of supportive or proactive safety culture at sites. HODs need to watch at-risk behaviors meter daily and discuss with fellow employees to control Kaila (2021). Afcons site professional says, it is very true, but rarely happens. Thermax safety professional found HODs behaviour is also at-risk behaviour at some places.

Maintaining the best quality of longterm safety culture is a continuous journey between the management and people at sites. It is good for the health of business. The positive outcome on safety requires sincere practice by all concerned. If business leaders don't keep safety ahead of business operations, they would find it extremely difficult to save business and the people from the incidents. Also, HODs passing the buck to area heads, area incharges to section heads and so on would hassle safety culture of the organizations.

Some so called BBS experts are trying the teach behavioural safety culture in a confused manner as they are not clear about the fundamentals of BBS approach of behavioural science. This tends to give wrong message to organisations about what is BBS and what it is not and how to implement it scientifically? In behavioural safety implementation, we need just 5 minutes of everyone from MD to the last person at sites. This magic of 5 minute (multiplied by number of employees and Associates each day) changes the entire arithmetic of safety culture and business of our corporates. Best observer is the one who also looks to his/her own unsafe behaviour and spot-correct it. BBS journey is good for the company’s financial safety, as it helps say goodbye to incidents cost, compensation, cases, and adds lots of relief for management. When everyone reached home without any injury, it is called a safe workplace. Don't let the risk become an incident, only you can prevent it as Baddi Behan/Badda Bhai (Big Brother/Big Sister) of safety Kaila (2021). Company needs to develop BBS as SOP.

 

 

 

Theme 9

Spot-implementation of BBS approach by top leaders

The critical question remains that how quickly can the safety culture be inculcated to save all at work? It requires a very courageous, fast-track leadership to reinforce spot-implementation of BBS approach for quick results of longterm safety culture at sites. We can't afford slow action on safety culture implementation for managing at-risk behaviors with serious implications.

Chairperson's recorded voice (BBS) message for daily announcements over Public Address System at sites: Dear Colleagues and Contractor Associates, "Kindly observe at your work area, if anyone is doing unsafe behaviour, please speak up and spot-correct the person as you are trained in a big brother safety approach". This facilitates spot-implementation of BBS.

Retaining people's trust in BBS to rebuilding safety culture is a collective effort at sites. Zero-harm is possible with continuous innovation in safety culture improvements. What eyes see, prepare the mindset backup. So keep increasing the percentage of safe behaviours to show to people to go down their mindset.

Everest Industries' safety culture planned intervention boosted confidence and competence of employees within 6 months. Sharing behavioral safety culture examples amongst the plants of this company on a common monthly platform helped implement best practices. The observers' participation helped understand the ground reality picture of a changing culture like, they even started observing micro, bottom level such as confined space issues and operational hazards or excellence aspects. Accident-free days increased as a result of safety culture transformation. Before safety culture implementation, employees and contractors workmen would avoid meeting safety officers, but after implementation of big brother safety approach, they started coming closer to share their observations. Plant Head also started conducting behavioural safety sessions with employees and workmen. Measurement of at-risk behaviours ea improved understanding of the safety culture.

When a reportable incident or accident happens at sites, the news goes out to stakeholders, market and the media which dampens the company’s business. Safety culture saves not only the employees from incidents but also the business assets and the interest of all stakeholders.

The question arises that how can we save time while making our safety culture implementation more precise and perfect? In this direction, the responses from safety professionals across India during the focused group discussions brought out many aspects, such as, by increasing trained observer on different locations of an organization, by making people understand that everyone is responsible and accountable for their own safety, to make a trained observers chain in organization, continuous focus and daily review of planned activities, group training to teams where we can save time, more training, mentoring and coaching. Toward this question, some specific recommendations are as under:

·        From Paradeep Phosphates, Orissa: Through 5T - team work, technology, transparency, time & transformation. All above through annual safety calendar, aainaa (advance action in industry to abate accident), mentoring & guide, access to safety mobile app, safety gathering ( now a days the COVID guidelines, safety touch,( emphasize on identifying & complying unsafe act & conditions, safety hot spots ( vulnerable locations to convert safe work place), use of technology (GPRS, training kiosk, speed gun, thermal imaging camera , CCTV & many more. Moreover safety compliance by stake holders & emergency drill.

·        From Everest Industries Mumbai: Lead by example and more important is, Culture flows from Top management, little time invested by top management will bring more precise and perfect safety culture.

·        From Hindalco, Dorf Ketal and Hiranandani: To make workforce competent and authorize to correct unsafe and safe behaviour spontaneous. By making each one responsible. By doing what we expect others to do. By retaining and retraining of employees/workers.

·        From Larsen and Toubro Construction, Hyderabad: One way could be by setting clear tone and following the same by every individual in the Organization. Also, frequent review by senior management / cross functional teams would help to save time.

·        From DCM Shriram, Delhi and IOCL Orissa : through active participation of all (more the number of enlightened observers faster would be the implementation). Of course, regular review by steering committee would drive its implementation, and spreading awareness, so training and training.

·        From Gharda Chemicals, Mumbai/ Gujarat: Any Culture is a practice suited /tailor-made to our routine life. So is the BBS for industrial activity related to our operations, maintenance, material handling etc. if developed and practiced daily won't need any additional time and effort, becomes normal way of life. Time is an investment.

·        From ONGC: If safety culture is precise and perfect, then it will save lot of time for organization. In Perfect Safety Culture, safety practices will be top driven. Safety practices will percolate down to grassroot level. When the new person joins the organization, first thing, he is sensitized about following Standard Operating Procedures, so he learns quickly and needs not to reinvent the wheel. If there are SOPs, these will ease out the operations thus saving lot of time for the organization . In today's world, Time is Money , so this is a very good tool to save money.

·        From Sembcorp: In Indian context, you can't save time. Even if safety culture is almost interdependent, there is labour's turnover and we don't have any full proof method of awarding contracts on minimum acceptable price instead of L1 (lowest). Even when your safety index is 99%, and you get 300 new associates with typical risk taking practices of Indian citizens, you are at risk. You have Contractors on L1 can't deliver and don't prioritize safety.

·        From IOCL: As Safety Culture becomes more precise and perfect, it's self driven. Workers become habitual of complying with safety norms, following SOPs 100% of the time. It becomes part of the DNA similar to what they follow in personal life such as they will never wear shoes when they enter inside a temple. When this is achieved, there are zero non compliance or safety violations. This builds trust and helps in reducing time consumed for cross check by Seniors. Also accidents tend to zero thereby increasing productivity and creating a positive atmosphere at work place which again motivates the workforce towards 'Safe Behaviour'.

 

 

 

 

 

Theme 10

How should we fast-track the supportive safety culture implementation at sites? Implementation means increasing empathy for safety of each other at site which requires sensitizing the manpower towards at-risk behaviors and spot-corrections continuously. In this regard, this research made a host of recommendations as follows: Make HODs as driver of safety culture from the initiation; BBS indicators should be one of the performance evaluation parameters of each individual of site (part of each individual’s KPI) but with proper mentorship by experts, so need to develop experts network, Making BBS as part of KRA/ Annual Objectives for everyone; Putting weightage on performance deliverables; Discuss daily hurdles on incidents/ unsafe behaviours; Rewards for mentors, followers; above all, drive and commitment/ zero tolerance from top management, specifically from the promoters. Setting examples by taking disciplinary actions on violations; and Philosophy of One person not following from a specific unit is mistake of entire unit. According to Aakash Thakur, Vice president of a large group chemical units, "I have even implemented these concepts in one of the retail organizations during my stint at Middle East". The best thing could be through observations at site, interacting with team leaders and the senior-most (CEO, MD or an investor directly). Also Portal or software to manage behavioural data, prefer one of android / IOS based mobile App which should have facility to upload site observations for immediate implementation under guidance of top management; Setting targets, putting behavioural observation target as individual key value driver, visible leadership of Project Manager and weekly review and monitoring from Headquarters; At the first step, diagnosis of organisational culture must be done. If we find positive safety culture prevailing in the organisation, then we will proceed to implement BBS, chances of success will be high. Increase the number of competent observers and on the spot correction on every shift will be the effective solution. It should be started with all HODs and after that observers to be covered every square inch of plant premises. Each meeting may start with observation sharing. First 3 minutes be dedicated to observations. Monitoring the progress and feedback to BBS champion as well as award and reward system. We should start with senior management, because in many cases it is taken as enforcement formalities instead of considering as part of business. Involvement of workmen who contribute to 60% of manpower, their observers and coordinators would keep track on each and every activity in the plant, this serves as a two tier system. A crash course on supportive safety culture in presence of top management, a stringent written policy signed by top management, read, understood and signed by all employees and contractors, include safety culture as part of site safety induction and more promotional activities such as weekly reward, include a write-up on contract specifications about BBS. There should be scaled up involvement of employee participation. One thing is noticed that workforce prefer informal way of communication rather than formal communication like suggestion box, so many sites have suggestion box biting the dust, informal way of communication is the preferred way of communication as workforce is largely comfortable. We have to develop the mechanism for employees to express themselves freely, without their active participation, we cannot take forward the safety culture movement. To sensitise people, reward in terms of annual increment, which will include individual BBS score of every person, every event and functions to start with BBS talk, displays of 12 behaviors checklist on every possible document, desktop, boards, and to advertise maximum to make people aware at each and every step. Finally, safety culture is like a birth of a baby, one needs to have patience however can facilitate the process, as expressed by the Director EHS of DCM Shriram. HSE heads of a green infra and a chemical multinationals, Robin Barboza and Avinash Shinde believed that regular intervention of management as well as sensitizing the workforce during daily tool box talk and meeting with a friendly approach as well as by observing safety behaviors at site have fast-tracked safety culture of our companies. In view of the award recognition for safety culture promotion in his organization, a GM EHS Mr. Indranil Chakraborty stated, “this will definitely motivate me to further enhance and strengthen the behavioural safety culture not only in my organization but also in the society and my surroundings”. HSE as a planned intervention is to be included into CSR initiatives by organizations to make safety culture a way of life. The trained behavioural safety observer does not limit himself to the site, but he / she should make one observation daily at site as well as outside the site to make society also safer.

 

3. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

After three years of implementation of behavioural safety culture management, Pavan Rao of Sembcorp emphasized that we will remove PPE from the observation checklist and make it as a consequence management. PPE will be replaced with presence of Barriers (Administrative or Engineering) while work is being performed. Changing the safety culture involves a systematic process of measurement, identifying strengths and weaknesses, deploying targeted interventions and learning from the results, to set the stage for continual improvement Ravi  et al. (2021). Ten themes of this research findings reflected upon the critical issues such as clarity about the fundamentals of longterm safety culture; following the reactive safety culture; promoting collective voices and leadership for spot-correction of at-risk behaviours; respect for religion, spirituality, festivities for safety at sites; BBS as an implementation of safety with feeling for others; understanding features of companies not empowering the workforce for safety implementation and preparing action plan; resolving competencies gap amongst the safety professionals, overcoming the major roadblocks in HSE decisions making at sites, and spot-implementation of the BBS approach by top leaders, and the factors to advance the success of longterm supportive safety culture. Supportive safety  culture also helped identify the training needs by and for employees on increasing awareness about risks that are shared and discussed during the observation process of all categories of risks. There are risks that both the observers and observees are aware of. There are also few risks that both the observers and observees are not aware of. These are collectively identified and discussed.

What is influencing employees to engage in at-risk behaviours is the company culture, as culture drives behaviours. Hence there is a need to buy-in employees into the supportive safety culture, and integrate it into safety management policy and procedures. There has to be easy-to-implement ways to prevent damage to HSE. Psychology applications have remarkably increased safety culture at sites along with carefully monitoring behavioural risk trends backed by HSE systems with deep management commitment. In public sector companies, behavioural safety approach has become a key area. Bad thing is that people take safety certificates but do not practice it. We have to understand that the impact of behavioural safety management is scattered across departments. So there is need to motivate, recognise and monitor people across the board. BBS fills all loopholes in HSE systems by involving people across the work areas. HSE Standards are there but there is a need to prevent the cancer of fatalities at construction sites. There is a need to touch hearts and minds both by management as well as peers, whereby everybody becomes an ambassador of safety by sharing examples. Most people thought that incident would not happen to them, and it happened. So there is need to lead rather lag in following socially appropriate behaviours. Awareness is the first step. BBS creates antecedents which encourage people to behave safe with high impact observations, as shared by a safety manager from Berry Global, “I wanted to make our workforce the way you've suggested a housekeeping personnel have gone for fire mitigation through her presence of mind and keen interest for a safer environment. The anecdote moved me really well”

Further, little is known about the necessary competencies and proficiency for safety officers. Regulatory compliance was assessed as the most important competency. Gaps between necessity and proficiency were observed in managing safety programs for the junior group. The results indicate that safety officers’ training needs may be particularly high for regulatory compliance, managing safety programs, and mental health. Lifelong learning is important for enabling occupational safety and health practitioners to fulfil current requirements. Multiple training approaches may encourage competency development, especially for junior safety practitioners Ishimaru et al. (2020). The gaps always existed on the competencies of safety professionals, as the basic training at the colleges is minimal, to develop further on the job competencies, individual experience and performances. The above perspectives of the Indian safety professionals recommend these gaps to be addressed on the behavioural safety approach to assess an organization's projected safety performance based on current behaviors safety index at sites.

Companies aimed to satisfy only legal / compliance requirements. Companies are made to understand by HR professionals that safety is a common subject, everyone can talk about it, that safety is to be managed. Law is to be complied. It's always the HR / IR team which handles compliance with authorities. So they satisfy them with numbers (as per law). As long as Safety is managed i.e complied, these gaps will continue. When Safety becomes commitment for the leadership, then every employee leads the company towards No Hurt - No Harm. Also, to ensure safe workplaces, a strong monitoring (inspections) and comprehensive database to frame corrective actions and policies are necessary Shyam Sundar (2022), because underreporting is a dark reality and has always been a problem in the field of OHS. Key performance indicators (KPI) of safety performance is also LTI  (lost time incidents) driven. It paves the way for converting LTI into FA/MTC (fatal accident/medical treatment) cases . There is no robust system for reporting of incidents, as underlined by a veteran safety professional.

Sincerity and responsibility for safety culture is needed. Most of the leaders and safety professionals at sites do not want to go extra miles, they only try to show we are doing many things but it does not change end result. There are very less competent HSE manpower, and under pressure to fill the vacancy they just want to fill the gaps. They are not interested to check/ improve competency. National Safety Councils need to address this issue of competencies gaps among the corporates HSE professionals through awareness and capacity building by conferences. We need to speak about it at Forums. Moreover, the Safety Professionals do not make the organisational decisions that have the most impact on the safety of work. These decisions are made by managers and frontline employees. Our impact on the safety of work is through relationships, communication and influence, and people only listen to people that they like and have an emotional connection with.

Three things fail the behavioural safety culture practices :

Managements leave focus in-between while developing safety culture; BBS doesn't reach the last person at site;

Observers feel disconnected with the EHS management. Solutions are found over the years in:

Continued effort in BBS concepts clarity. Continued retraining of more observers. Continued rewarding of observers at sites.

Observers at sites get connected to people faster when they tend to support unconditionally during the process of risk-correction with empathy and personal example. Mr. A S Reddy, a safety professional believed that there is a need to strengthen every capable citizen to serve as philanthropist to bring up nation in all respects. The critical query remains that, is the world of safety actually a last subject in organisations and our society, or is it dealt with a smart lip service, looking at the reality by way of behavioural criteria is important for industry and social science professionals. Spot-correction of at-risk behaviours and spot-implementation of behavioural safety concepts and applications is needed by all concerned for longterm changes in safety culture using proven predictors of team effectiveness i.e. psychological safety perspectives that extend beyond the work content to include broad aspects of employees’ personal circumstances and experiences Edmondson and Mortensen (2021), and including psychosocial risks that affect psychological health of people ISO 45003:2021 (2021). Finally, safety culture embodies a mission and personality orientation of leaders from workplace to every place which also requires an understanding of current trends in supportive safety culture conceptualization and interventions by the organizations and the employers.

McKinsey reported that organizations attempting to shape safety culture put too much emphasis on tools and processes and pay insufficient attention to the underlying employee mind-sets that shape personal-safety behaviors and interactions Hortense de la Boutetière et al. (2019). Below are few of these behaviors that are often repeated but less done, which fast-tracked the safety culture in industry.

·        Leaders interactions on shopfloor with all levels of employees (Personal and professional).

·        Field rounds by all level of managers and Field rounds by representatives from work force.

·        Open mind to hear about shortcomings and concerns from shopfloor employees (Fix them and communicate to them directly).

·        Reward and Recognition (in public).

·        Appointing a team responsible for initiation and implementation.

·        Aligning senior management with BBS vision.

·        Regular Review meeting, training, retraining and Motivational rewards.

·        Involving business partners.

·        Safety observations should not dip.

·        Nearmiss Reporting to increase.

·        Consider safe observations and global spot-correction of at-risk behaviors.

·        Incident reduction to focus.

·        Proactive Compliances to exemplify.

·        Reaction of people to be respected.

·        Managers must ensure to match higher targets, deadlines and safety behaviours.

 

The business excellence is not achievable without safety culture excellence, and the safety-time seems to be the best indicator of how much safety culture has been evolved in the company by its people by daily contribution of an observation round. So if you need to fast-track building the safety culture, increase the safety time of your employees and associates. The possibility of injuries and incidents at site can be proportionately equaled to the active safety time of observations and spot-corrections Kaila (2020). Fast-tracking supportive safety culture at sites and fixing critical issues for not facing incidents, in brief, is to actively engage daily in caring and importantly praying for human life at all places. Unsafe conditions, barriers and risks are everywhere and manageable if people behave safe, and regularly alert and connect with others as brother and sister of safety, health and environment. This means that the positive behavioral approach is valued and exercised daily by everyone in society and industry towards a common goal of building a supportive safety culture that provides wellbeing and safe environment. Fast-tracking supportive safety culture at sites would push the business excellence into next level, whereas absence of which would be potential to damage the business. Every person from supervisor to manager level has to be made safety conscious, responsible and accountable. This is achievable when people are intensely sensitized to care human life with compassion. It should be demonstrated by example as some guys come to site without basic PPE, they teach lessons / try to implement, where workers sense it is fake, we get similar response in silence. Brief mechanics of fast-track safety culture include the following: Behavioural Safety training cum survey is completed to discern the percentage of at-risk behaviors; Plant Head issues BBS implementation circular to all; on the same day of circular, all HODs give Mass-communications Figure 3, Figure 4 to all at site; daily display of at-risk behaviors in the plant as a proactive practice, HODs take reverse TBT daily; monthly progress review is carried out, bridging gap between corporate /site safety culture, and so on. In brief, Saving from incidents is to save time for spot-correction. If you are wasting time in spot-correction of at-risk behaviors, you are on the road to waste business as well. Safety culture is the foundation of business culture.

Figure 3 Mass-communications at Godrej Industries, Mumbai

 

 

Figure 4 Mass-communications at Galaxy Surfactants

 

The appreciable case points of some large Indian individual companies’ behavioral safety supportive culture as a longterm planned intervention, are like, best managing director’s personal engagement at Galaxy Surfactants, best EHS Director’s drive at DCM Shriram, best challenges and cooperation at GAIL, best analysis management at Sembcorp Energy, fastest implementation at SAIL, best self-driven project at HPCL, best continuing efforts at Larsen & Toubro, large coverages at Tata Projects, AFCONS, Aarti-industries, Vedanta, IOCL. Other companies that initiated safety culture movement, yet need to fast-track it as a business strategy, are like, ITC, RIL, Colourtex, Everest, Reliance Energy, Ultratech, CFCL, Sandoz, M&M, BPCL, BDMA, ONGC, Suzlon, TUV, DNV, Bajaj Auto, Bayer CropScience, Serum, SMC, NPC, GE, BHEL, Oil India, Privi, HCC, Kalpatru, Torrent, CTEA, Greentech, ICC, Pidilite, Volkswagen, Jindal, Sterlite, RCF, Solaris, Agrocel, Piramal, Dorf Ketal, TRL Krosaki, Uflex, AM/NS, Hikal, Sunshield, Gunnebo, Amara-Raja, Hindalco, Ampacet, Toyota, NTPC, Vaaman, Baerlocher, Gharda, CPCL, Godrej, Hirschvogel, Asian Paints, Vasudha, Thyssenkrupp. We wish to see revolution in safety culture of all organizations as a business goal achieving zero-harm and so on. It is important to understand here that the BBS trainings, being conducted just to meet training calendar targets, which are not a part of the longterm planned intervention, would not help improve the organizational safety performance.

National safety culture depends upon the safety response of citizens. If large number of citizens anywhere behave safe and responsibly, we call it a safe culture. If we have to improve the safety culture, we have to respond to how people around us are behaving, safe or unsafe. When everyone speaks up and respond to unsafe or at-risk behaviors, it is our collective response which decides the safety culture of that place. Especially during the existing scenario of Covid19, our safety response is vital to increase the quality of HSE culture. Let's take oaths that we shall individually take responsibility to behave safe and ensure that people around us also behave safe, if not, we shall speak up with all respect and patience till the time people have learned or modified their behavioral safety response. One person's care is another person's safety. One observation a day, keep the risk away. Hence, our response would decide the safety culture of our company, community, family, city, nation, the globe. If in India, we are 130 crore of population, we can daily achieve 130 crore of safe behaviours in our public, only if we look around and reinforce safety responses positively. The top leaders In educational, industrial and other institutions would make daily compassionate appeal to their masses Figure 5 to reinforce safe behaviours and spot-correct at-risk behaviors among students, employees etc. Almost 75% of people around us are already behaving safe, they need to remind the rest 25% to behave safer on daily basis during their interactions with them on the workplaces, roads, residential buildings and so on. Their immediate safety responses depend upon the ingenuity as well as number of risk-based-conversations with them. This necessitates the role of every citizen in fast-tracking safety culture to save lives from incidents. Each citizen needs to be very sensitive about the risk perception as well as risk communication in his/her daily environments.

Support the safe culture,

Don’t ignore the unsafe,

Correct it on-the-spot,

Be a proud citizen,

Become a big brother of safety and society!

Safety starts from us, but it begins with you!

Develop leaders of safety culture to sustain in society.

 

Figure 5 Mass-communications at Baerlocher Project Site at Dewas, India

 

Choueiri (2021) concluded that individuals, organizations, and the economy, all suffer when workplace hazards are ignored. Hence, safety culture efforts would save all these in the long run in wider interest of our societies. Safety culture is considered successful when it becomes a value system and everyone values and speaks up for safety of each other. The theme of the National Safety Day 2022 is to “Ensure integration of OSH in work culture and lifestyle”, which is precisely 'safety in the behavior of everyone' to be ensured at workplace and everyplace. The benefits of safety culture must go to every citizen or workmen. Safety voices by everyone give fast safety culture to everyone else. Never miss it. It's a great service to offer to our Mother land to see that everyone walks out of their workplace safely.

 

Criticality perception needs to be redefined to all manpower as well as citizens, like a small unsafe behaviour becomes fatal for human life anywhere anytime. Risk is inevitable, not an accident.

Strategically, at the country or state level, we need to form and mobilize a safety culture implementation strategy groups which can be trained to percolate down the training and implementation in industry as well as society. All government and private agencies such as income tax, insurance, contractors shall get benefitted as all profits lost in incidents, fire, fatalities, accidents would be saved and distributable to all in some manner. The news of incidents and accidents reach fast to the share holders of the company, and affect its share price at the share markets, which can be altered with the supportive safety culture. Hence, any at-risk behavior cannot be ignored or delayed for spot-correction as it would multiply like cancer cells. How much a company is safe depends upon the percentage of safe and at-risk behaviours it has? Display of safety culture score board at sites on daily basis is helpful for knowledge of manpower to stop incidents related losses. National Safety Day 2022 reads the message from a Director EHS of DCM Shriram, “Happy Safety Day. Let us commit to make each day a happy safety day by exhibiting positive behaviours in our actions and carrying out spot-correction of at-risk behaviours of self and others for creating safer workplaces”.

 

REFERENCES

Barnes, Emily (2021, June, 15).NSC National Safety Month 2021: Week 3 - It's Vital to Feel Safe on the Job. Retrieved on 25 Nov 2021. https://www.ehs.com/2021/06/nsc-national-safety-month-2021-week-3- its-vital-to-feel-safe-on-the-job/

Burdick, Guy (2019, May 13). Big Growth and Change Expected for the Safety Profession. Retrieved on 22 Nov 2021. https://ehsdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/05/big-growth-and-change-expected-for-the-safety- profession/

Choueiri, Elias M. (2021, Dec). Individuals, Organizations, and the Economy: All Suffer When Workplace Hazards Are Ignored! WSJ Vol. XXX No. 4, 67.  Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5865442

Edmondson, Amy C. and Mortensen, Mark (2021, April 19). What Psychological Safety Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace. Retrieved on 30 Nov 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/04/what-psychological-safety-looks-like-in-a-hybrid-workplace  

Hortense de la Boutetière, Jean-Benoît Grégoire Rousseau, and Eion Turnbull (2019, May, 21). Overcoming limiting mind-sets to improve safety.  Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/overcoming-limiting-mind-sets-to-improve-safety

Ishimaru, Tomohiro & Punpeng, Twisuk & Maiyapakdee, Chavinthorn & Ketsakorn, Arroon & Fujino, Yoshihisa & Hara, Kunio. (2020). Survey of the necessary competencies and proficiency of safety officers in Thailand. Industrial Health. 58. 10.2486/indhealth.2019-0205. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2486/indhealth.2019-0205

ISHN (2021, October, 7). How does your safety culture impact workers? Retrieved on 22 Nov 2021. https://www.ishn.com/articles/113124-how-does-your-safety-culture-impact-workers

ISHN (2021, Dec 2). A young pro and his mentor address safety culture engagement - delivering safety excellence. Retrieved on 29 Nov 2021. https://www.ishn.com/articles/113172-a-young-pro-and-his-mentor-address-safety-culture-engagement  

ISO 45003:2021 (2021). Occupational health and safety management - Psychological health and safety at work - Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. Retrieved from https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:45003:ed- 1:v1:en    

Keenan, Paul Michael (2017, March 11). Spiritual Vulnerability, Spiritual Risk and Spiritual Safety - In Answer to a Question: 'Why Is Spirituality Important within Health and Social Care?' at the 'Second International Spirituality in Healthcare Conference 2016: Nurturing the Spirit.' Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin. Religions 2017, 8, 38; https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/3/38 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8030038

Kaila, Harbans Lal (2018, July). Behaviouralization of Safety Implementation in India. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 2, 363-374.

Kaila, H. L. (2020). Planned intervention of behaviour-based safety (BBS) helps organisations improve their safety time arithmetic. World Safety Journal, 29(3), 34-41.

Kaila, Harbans Lal (2021). Behavioural Benchmarking as a Robust Tool of Total Safety Culture in Industries.

The Journal of Insurance Institute of India, July-Sept 2021, Vol. IX (1), 82-88.

Harbans, Lal (2021). Why Industry is Losing Faith in HSE Awards?:Professionals Rethink. IJTD, 51(1), 82- 90.

Harbans, Lal (2021a). Behavioural Economics of Safety Culture Management in Companies. OPUS, 12 (2) 2021, 21-42. Retrieved from http://www.publishingindia.com/opus/

Halligan, Michelle & Zecevic, Aleksandra & Kothari, Anita & Salmoni, Alan & Orchard, Treena. (2013). Understanding Safety Culture in Long-Term Care: A Case Study. Journal of patient safety. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1097/PTS.0b013e31829d4ae7

MySafetySign (2021). Is management the biggest roadblock to safety? Retrieved on 29 Nov 2021. Retrieved from  https://www.mysafetysign.com/blog/roadblock-to-safety-programs/

Paoletta, David (2020, Jul, 1). Retrieved on 29 Nov 2021. Core Attributes of a World-Class Safety Culture. https://safesitehq.com/safety-culture/

Pettinger, Chuck (2020, August, 25). 5 Ways to Build a Culture of Safety for the Long Term. Retrieved on 23 Nov 2021. https://www.ehstoday.com/safety-leadership/article/21140054/5-ways-to-build-a-culture- of-safety-for-the-long-term

Ravi, D., Tawfik, D.S., Sexton, J.B. et al. (2021). Changing safety culture. J Perinatol. 41, 2552-2560. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41372-020-00839-0

SHRM (2020, September 8). Accommodating Religion, Belief and Spirituality in the Workplace. Retrieved on 24 Nov 2021. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-andsamples/toolkits/pages/accommodating-religion,-belief-and-spirituality-in-the-workplace.aspx

Shyam Sundar, K.R. (2022, Feb, 14). A dipping graph in occupational safety and health. The Hindu. Retrieved from https://epaper.thehindu.com/Home/ShareArticle?OrgId=GB59GCH21.1&imageview=0

Urbach, Tina and Fay, Doris (2020, February, 21). Leader Member Exchange in Leaders' Support for Voice: Good Relationships Matter in Situations of Power Threat. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12245

Veľas, A., Halaj, M., Hofreiter, L. et al. (2021). Research of security and safety culture within an organization. The case study within the Slovak Republic. Secur J (2021). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1057/s41284-021- 00291-5

Vos, Jaime (2021, April 12). Empower your employees to create a culture of safety: here's how. Retrieved on 27 Nov 2021. https://www.aem.org/news/empower-your-employees-to-create-a-culture-of-safety- heres-how     

Williams, Oliver (2021, Sep., 1). Strengthen your safety culture. Retrieved on 28 Nov 2021.https://www.ioshmagazine.com/2021/09/01/strengthen-your-safety-culture