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
Dov Zohar 2
Key ideas
There is nothing more practical than a good theory
(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
What gets measured, gets rewarded hence managed
Dov Zohar 3
.
A practical theory for Safety Climate
Dov Zohar 4
What is organizational climate?
Functional view
Climate reflects shared (socially verified) assessments
of the workplace, i.e. which behaviors are likely to be
rewarded & supported (collective sense-making)
Such shared perceptions are valuable in ambiguous
situations: competing operational demands (safety
vs. speed), espoused policies vs. enacted practices
Safety climate reveals the perceived priority or value
of acting safely, as assessed and mutually verified by
employees (leaders daily actions as main cues)
Dov Zohar 5
Climate as indication of true priorities
walk-the-talk test
Use a safety-climate scale whose items refer to
supervisory/peer practices in situations where safety
and production present competing demands
Members pay special attention in such situations
because they provide clearest indication of the true
priorities (role behaviors likely to be supported)
Multilevel model: Strategic and supervisory leaders
may adopt divergent priorities (bounded variation),
resulting in distinctive group- and org. level climates
Dov Zohar 6
Measuring climate
Multilevel 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
1.00
1.50
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
c
o
r
e
1-GL 2-GL avg 1 avg2
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Climate predicts safety performance
413 workgroups (Zohar & Luria, 2005)
Org.-level
climate
Ave. Group
climates
Operations
safety
0.41**
0.38**
0.44**
Strength
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A practical theory for Safety Culture
Where does climate come from?
Dov Zohar 10
What is organizational culture?
Scheins 3-tier model
Deep tier: Shared assumptions about world - human
nature, work, management, safety (deeply buried)
e.g. Safety as injury; Safety as compliance (discipline)
Surface tier: Wide range of visible expressions, or
artifacts (easy to observe but difficult to interpret)
e.g. Many elaborate safety rules; Rule-based training
Middle tier: Espoused values/beliefs, justify company
goals & 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)
Dov Zohar 11
Leaders create culture
Operational framework
Daily verbal exchanges between leader & members is
a key source of social influence (concrete task issues)
Symbolic content or sub-text, as perceived by the
recipient, identifies deeper culture-shaping messages:
1. True priorities among competing goals, demands
2. 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 exchanges
offer an observable culture metric (% messages):
Recipients as human detectors: use a tailored checklist
of perceived sub-textual cultural messages
Quality-control methods: use random sampling of
exchanges (by consent; agreed sampling framework)
Immediate analysis of each sampled exchange, using
recipients as interpreters (3-min. process)
Remote measurement: use cell-phone & internet to
collect data, analyze it, and offer bi-weekly personal FB
Dov Zohar 13
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
-
) (
,
) (
(
) ,
( ,
) ,
Dov Zohar 14
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 to
safety-as-(ongoing) reliability
Reverse the priority/utility due to the high incentive
power of frequent recognition/attention: U
safe
>U
unsafe
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 employees
behavior 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
Dov Zohar 17
.
Applications and interventions
Dov Zohar 18
Intervention example: Oil refinery
Safety exchanges & unsafe operations (%)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
1 5 9
1
3
1
7
2
1
2
5
2
9
3
3
3
7
4
1
Weeks
%
Supervisory Interactions
Electric work
Movement in zones
Base-line Intervention Follow-up
Dov Zohar 19
Steel Company
Safety exchanges & safety compliance (%)
T o t a 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 1 0
R e p o r ti n g W e e k
%

S
a
f
e
t
y

E
x
c
h
a
n
g
e
s
4 0
4 5
5 0
5 5
6 0
6 5
7 0
7 5
8 0
%

S
a
f
e

O
p
e
r
a
t
i
o
n
s
% S a fe t y E x c h a n g e s % S a fe O p e ra t i o n s
Dov Zohar 20
Intervention: Fiber-plastics
Two years later
Adjust Frequency data (*10); Severity data (*100)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Injury Frequency
Rate*
Injury Severity
Rate*
% Reliable
Exchanges
% Reliable
Operations
2002 2003 2004
Dov Zohar 21
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 compliance
to leaders daily practices
Leaders create culture climate: any real change
depends on the companys senior leadership
Dov Zohar 22
.
Thank You