Safety culture: assessing and changing the behaviour of organisations

Facility safety is an important commercial risk and it has to be managed insists John Taylor in Safety Culture.

Following an accident, the lack of a 'good' safety management system, compounded by a 'poor' safety culture, is a charge often laid on organisations.

Accidents can take up to thirty percentage points off annual profits and, often, failure to manage safety has a much larger social cost that can involve fatalities or serious injury to members of the workforce and public.

This has been starkly demonstrated in the railway industry, the international atomic energy industry, and through events in the oil exploration and refinery industry.

In business terms, the ultimate cost can be receivership.