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An assessment of the effectiveness of behaviour-based safety systems in establishing organisational culture / J. Cronje

People, processes and teams form the basis of organisational success. Therefore
the understanding and prediction of people and their behaviour- both individual and
in a team - is a critical management activity. Behaviour of people are influenced by
internal factors such as personality, abilities and skills, perception, beliefs and
motives as well as by external factors from the environment in which the individual
operates. Understanding these forces and their influence on the individual is
paramount if one is to understand how to canalise these behaviours to achieve any
given organisational goal. Another concept important to understand, is that of organisational culture which is regarded as beliefs, values and learned ways of coping with experience. Organisational culture develops during the course of an organisation's history, and has become a more and more important concept in organisations, due to its strategic nature and impact on business. The culture of an organisation can be influenced and changed naturally over time, or by using deliberate, carefully designed cultural
change interventions. The maturity of an organisation's HSEC systems and processes and related improvement in performance, is related to the prevailing HSEC culture evident in the organisation. It is evident that as an organisation moves from a reactive safety culture to an interdependent safety culture, so does the HSEC performance and
lagging indicators of the organisation increase. Behaviour-based safety processes
endeavour to influence the individual employee's behaviour in order to improve the
safety performance of an organisation. The benefits of behaviour-based safety
programs are numerous and lead to reduced injuries and improved levels of safe
behaviour amongst employees. Metalloys has selected behaviour-based safety as
one of the tools to entrench a culture of zero harm in the organisation and to
establish an empowered and enabled workforce. The effectiveness of this approach
was assessed during this study The empirical research conducted for this study revealed that both the average response rate per construct and the responses per question within the various constructs reflect a positive response to the elements tested. It is evident from the results that a large proportion of the employees are of the opinion that
communication processes are effectively established, employees are involved on a
personal level, that there is sufficient supervisor support and that leadership exhibits
visible leadership in the organisation. These are all constructs testing the elements
required to effectively establish the culture of the organisation. In addition, a large proportion of the employees felt that HSEC systems are well entrenched and that facilities and equipment are of such a standard, as to ensure the safety of employees and that these are maintained at high levels. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/7388
Date January 2010
CreatorsCronje, Jennifer
PublisherNorth-West University
Source SetsNorth-West University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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