Safety Culture and Climate in Construction:

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice

June 11-12, 2013
Omni Shoreham Hotel – Washington DC

Workshop Report
©2014, CPWR – The Center for Construction Research and Training. All rights reserved. CPWR is the research, training,
and service arm of the Building and Construction Trades Dept., AFL-CIO, and works to reduce or eliminate safety and
health hazards construction workers face on the job. Production of this report was supported by Grant OH009762 from the
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors
and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIOSH.
Safety Culture and Climate in Construction:
Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice
June 11-12, 2013
Omni Shoreham Hotel – Washington, DC

Workshop Report

Authors
This workshop report was prepared by a subset of the workshop planning committee
(in alphabetical order):
Matt Gillen, CIH, Deputy Director of the NIOSH Office of Construction Safety and Health
Dr. Linda M. Goldenhar, Director, Research and Evaluation, CPWR - The Center for
Construction Research and Training
Steve Hecker, Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Oregon
Scott Schneider, CIH, Director of Occupational Safety and Health, Laborers’ Health and
Safety Fund of North America

Corresponding author: Dr. Linda M. Goldenhar, lgoldenhar@cpwr.com

The findings and conclusions in this report have not been formally disseminated
by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.
Table of Contents

Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Chapter 1 Defining and Framing Safety Culture and Climate for the Construction Industry. . . . . . . . . . 10

Chapter 2 Leader Indicators: Key Factors that Contribute to Safety Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Chapter 3 Assessing Safety Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Chapter 4 Interventions to Improve Safety Climate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 5 Next Steps for Bridging the Gap and Moving Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Chapter 6 Recommendations and Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Reference List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Appendix 1 Construction Track Agenda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Appendix 2 Session Handout: Parker/Safety Science Rubric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Appendix 3 Session Handout: OSHA I2P2 Rubric. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Appendix 4 Selected Safety Culture/Climate Assessment Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Appendix 5 Workshop Evaluation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Researchers and practitioners have identified safety culture and safety climate as key to reducing
injuries, illnesses and fatalities on construction worksites. Many construction contractors are
trying to improve these indicators as a way to move closer to a goal of achieving zero injury
worksites. Unfortunately, neither the industry nor the scientific literature have reached a consen-
sus on how to define these concepts, how they should be measured, or which interventions
designed to improve them are likely to succeed. If we are to ever understand the degree to which
safety culture and safety climate contribute to improving safety outcomes, we need to 1) agree on
what safety culture and safety climate mean, 2) develop reliable and valid ways to measure them so
we can identify and target sites needing improvement, and 3) design, implement, and evaluate
interventions that, based on the research metrics, actually improve them.
In 2008, the Construction Sector Council of the National Occupational Research Agenda
(NORA), sponsored by NIOSH, developed a research agenda. One of the 15 strategic goals
identified for research was “Construction Culture.” It specified the need to better understand
safety culture in construction and how it impacts construction safety and health.
To help address these needs and move the NORA Construction Sector Council research
agenda forward, CPWR – The Center for Construction Research and Training and The National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) convened a 1½ day workshop June 11-12,
2013. The construction-focused workshop was part of a larger Safety Climate and Safety Culture
workshop co-hosted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and
CPWR. While there were shared plenary and closing sessions, there were two separate tracks,
each attended by a different target audience (NIEHS report can be found at http://tools.niehs.
nih.gov/wetp/).
A literature review and fifteen interviews were conducted prior to the workshop, and
meeting organizers used the results to inform the meeting structure and provide input for session
planning. Short trigger talks followed by small structured group discussions were used to ensure
the workshop would be an interactive experience for all attendees. Seventy-two invited construc-
tion stakeholders representing the following constituency groups participated in the construction
track: contractors (25%), employer associations (12%), labor organizations (14%), researchers/
academics (40%), consultants (6%), and insurance firms (4%). Participants were assigned to one
of the six work groups to guarantee a balanced mix of invited constituent groups in each group.
Trained group facilitators used a structured set of topics and questions as a way to maximize
discussion and obtain report-out material from each session. The planning committee spent five
months developing the facilitator handbook (available upon request) along with relevant and
useful handout materials to use during the various workshop sessions.

Workshop Process and Outcomes

This report describes the overall progression of the workshop and its individual sessions, output
from the discussion groups and the workshop as a whole, and poses additional critical questions
and action items for follow-up.
Session 1 titled: Defining and Framing Safety Culture and Climate for the Construction
Industry, oriented participants to the workshop structure and activities, reviewed key consider-
ations that frame safety culture and climate in construction, and included discussion and voting
on the specific definitions of safety climate and safety culture.

5
 Session 2 titled: Leading indicators: Key factors that contribute to safety climate, addressed
current thinking on which leading indicators (i.e., factors) can reliably predict safety climate and
the relationship between safety climate and safety outcomes. Work groups developed lists of the
most critical factors comprising safety climate for the construction industry.
Session 3 titled: Assessing safety climate, pertained to ways in which safety climate is
measured. The primary objectives were to discuss safety climate assessment in construction,
describe how safety climate can be used as a leading indicator of safety performance, and explain
the difference between surveys and rubrics and when it may be more useful to use one rather than
the other.
Session 4: titled Interventions to improve safety climate, focused on the work groups
Safety identifying interventions to improve safety climate factors/indicators and discussing
culture is inherent practical considerations and tips for successful implementation including barriers to
to the organization; successful implementation.
safety climate is an Session 5, the final session, focused on next steps for bridging the gaps and
moving forward. The primary objectives were to summarize the earlier discussions and
expression of
identify areas of agreement, disagreement and uncertainty; current and future needs;
safety culture on
and steps to carry the workshop discussion forward toward action.
a jobsite. In general, the workshop participants believed that safety culture was defined as
inherent to the organization whereas safety climate was defined as the expression of safety
culture on a particular jobsite and at a particular time. The work groups identified a number of
factors they perceived were important indicators of safety climate. The final factors voted on by
the larger group as being most critical are:
• Supervisory leadership
• Safety as a value/safety alignment
• Management commitment
• Employee empowerment /and involvement
• Accountability
• Communication
• Training
• Owner/Client Involvement
Participants believed that measuring safety climate was important for learning about a
project’s current level of safety climate as well as determining if changes to improve it are effec-
tive. Numerous safety climate surveys have been used in construction and while neither research-
ers nor practitioners have coalesced around any one standard survey tool, existing surveys have
many similarities (See Appendix 4 for list of existing tools). A rubric approach was presented at
the workshop which allows for a qualitative evaluation of progress towards achieving an ‘exem-
plary’ safety climate. A rubric is a scoring tool that includes a set of criteria for assessing achieve-
ment of a particular type of work or performance. Many of the participants saw advantages to
such an approach.
The workgroups identified and discussed numerous interventions that could be used to
improve each of the identified safety climate factors. They also noted barriers that could hinder
implementation including construction schedules, perceived lack of time and resources, organiza-
tional silos, low bid contracting, and other project delivery constraints. Participants also discussed
the need to evaluate interventions to identify those that are most effective.

6
Workshop Follow-up
The literature and presentations from the workshop are posted at http://www.cpwr.com/safety-
culture. Also, in an effort to develop useful and measurable working definitions for both safety
culture and safety climate, the meeting organizers examined the workshop voting results, defini-
tions presented in the published literature, and construction stakeholder interviews. They con-
cluded that while safety culture is more widely used it is often applied as a catchall term to reflect
organizational norms and members’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors. While in popular usage
the terms “safety culture” and “safety climate” are often seen as interchangeable, they have
specific and distinct meanings and therefore need to be measured differently. The committee used
the following criteria to guide the development of the safety culture and safety climate definitions
presented in the report:
• Clarify the distinctions between culture and climate
• Facilitate assessment as well as intervention development and implementation
• Reflect that safety is not separate from but rather is integrally related to overall organiza-
tional operation and performance
• Account for the particular characteristics of the construction industry.

The resulting three definitions are:

(Organizational) Safety Culture: Deeply held but often unspoken safety-related beliefs,
attitudes, and values that interact with an organization’s systems, practices, people, and leadership
to establish norms about how things are done in the organization. Safety culture is a subset of,
and clearly influenced by, organizational culture. Organizations often have multiple cultures or
subcultures, and this may be particularly true in construction.
(Organizational) Safety Climate: The shared perceptions of safety policies and procedures by
members of an organization at a given point in time, particularly regarding the adequacy of safety
and consistency between actual conditions compared to espoused safety policies and procedures.
Homogeneous subgroups tend to develop shared perceptions while between-group differences
are not uncommon within an organization.
Project Safety Climate: Perceptions of occupational safety and health on a particular con-
struction project at a given point in time. It is a product of the multiple safety climates from the
different organizations involved in the project including the project owner, construction manager/
general contractor, and subcontractors. Project safety climate may be heavily influenced by local
conditions such as project delivery method, schedule and planning, and incentives.
Future research needs to be conducted to develop common indicators and measures of
safety climate. This will help standardize safety climate and safety culture measurement, advance
intervention implementation and allow for better evaluation of intervention effectiveness across
the diverse sectors of the construction industry, including smaller contractors.
In summary, on behalf of the meeting organizers and the workshop participants that shared
their perspectives and experiences, we hope this report provides a useful resource for construction
practitioners and researchers alike. More attention is needed on this important topic, which is so
relevant to improving safety and health conditions for the nation’s construction workers.

7
Introduction

Both researchers and practitioners have identified safety culture and safety climate as key to
reducing injuries, illnesses and fatalities on construction worksites. Many construction contractors
are trying to improve these indicators as a way to move closer to a goal of achieving zero injury
worksites. Unfortunately, neither the industry nor the scientific literature have reached a consen-
sus on how to define these concepts, how they should be measured, or which interventions
designed to improve them are likely to succeed. If we are to ever understand the degree to which
safety culture and safety climate contribute to improving safety outcomes, we need to 1) agree on
what safety culture and safety climate mean, 2) develop reliable and valid ways to measure them so
we can identify and target sites needing improvement, and 3) design, implement, and evaluate
interventions that, based on the research metrics, actually improve them.
In 2008, the Construction Sector Council of the National Occupational Research Agenda
(NORA), sponsored by NIOSH, developed a research agenda. One of the 15 strategic goals
identified for research was “Construction Culture.” It specified the need to better understand
safety culture in construction and how it impacts construction safety and health. The overarching
strategic goal and related intermediate goals are presented below:

STRATEGIC GOAL 8.0: Increase understanding of factors that contribute to safety culture and climate in
the construction industry and improve sector capabilities to evaluate and improve practices at the policy,
organizational, and individual level. Promote increased attention to safety culture and climate as a way to
improve the effectiveness of safety and health programs and practices.
• Intermediate Goal 8.1: Create a working definition and framework for construction
industry safety and health culture and improve understanding of the factors that contribute
to a positive or negative safety and health culture in the construction industry.
• Intermediate Goal 8.2: Develop and expand the use of validated measurement methods
for evaluating safety culture and safety climate in the construction industry.
• Intermediate Goal 8.3: Partner with construction stakeholders to develop and disseminate
effective intervention measures for improving safety and health culture in the construction
industry.

To help address these needs and move the NORA Construction Sector Council research agenda
forward, The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) and The National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) convened a 1½ day workshop June 11-12, 2013. The
construction-focused workshop was part of a larger Safety Climate and Safety Culture workshop
co-hosted by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and CPWR.
While there were shared plenary and closing sessions, there were two separate tracks, each attend-
ed by a different target audience (NIEHS report can be found at http://tools.niehs.nih.gov/wetp/).
See Appendix 1 for the construction track agenda.

8
 Seventy-two invited construction stakeholders representing the following constituency
groups participated in the construction track:

Contractors 25%

Employer Associations 12%

Labor Organizations 14%

Researchers/Academics 40%

Consultants 6%

Insurance 4%

The planning committee designed the construction track to have short trigger sessions followed by
small group discussions to ensure it would be an interactive experience. Participants were strategi-
cally assigned to one of six small groups to guarantee a balanced mix of invited constituent groups
in each group. Prior to the workshop, group facilitators were trained to use a structured set of
topics and questions as a way to maximize discussion and obtain report-out material from each
session. The planning committee developed a facilitator handbook (available upon request) along
with relevant and useful handout materials to use during the various workshop sessions. A brief
literature review containing important background material pertaining to safety culture and safety
climate in construction as well as in other industries was prepared by two of the members (Hecker
and Goldenhar) and distributed to participants. Participant evaluations and post-workshop feed-
back indicated a great deal of enthusiasm for the meeting and in some cases offered ideas for
potential follow-up activities.
This report describes the overall progression of the workshop, output from the discussion
groups and the workshop as a whole, and poses additional critical questions and action items for
follow-up. The content reflects the current debate and discussion about safety culture and
climate, particularly as applied to the unique construction work environment. This workshop was
intended to be the beginning of, and this report to be a stimulus for, ongoing discussions that will
lead to fundamental improvements in construction safety culture and safety climate and ultimately
construction worker safety and health.

9
Chapter 1: Defining and Framing Safety Culture
and Climate for the Construction Industry

The primary objectives of this session were to:

1. Orient participants to the workshop structure and specific session activities; acquaint them
with the handout and evaluation materials and Audience Response System (ARS) multi-vot-
ing processes.
2. Review key considerations that frame safety culture and climate in construction.
3. Discuss and vote on, both as a group and as individuals, the specific definitions of safety
climate and safety culture.

Trigger speaker - Steve Hecker, Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon, was the
first trigger speaker and began his talk by asking the construction track participants to consider if
and how the unique characteristics of the construction industry might influence the safety culture
and safety climate concepts and ideas he presented during the earlier combined workshop plenary
session. The specific characteristics he mentioned include a mobile and transient workforce, craft
acculturation and norms, distinct craft cultures, the role of the construction foreman, multi-em-
ployer worksites, employer culture vs. project culture, project delivery methods that can facilitate
or hinder steps to a more positive culture, the segmentation of the construction industry, and the
preponderance of small employers. He referenced ideas from the literature review summary that
pertain specifically to the construction industry. Below are a few key points. (Presentations and
Literature Review Summary are available at http://www.cpwr.com/safety-culture).

Approximately 50 construction-specific studies of safety culture or climate have been pub-

lished in English. A majority were conducted by academics outside the United States includ-
ing Hong Kong, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and Australia. Most of the measure-
ment tools were not construction specific or were adapted from instruments designed for
general industry application.

The value of safety climate metrics for predicting safety outcomes has been supported by t
wo meta-analyses that included a number of construction studies (Nahrgang et al. 2010;
Christian et al. 2009). Safety behaviors and injuries were typically measured via self-reports,
observations, or administrative processes. Most studies were cross-sectional so causal rela-
tionships cannot be determined. A few of the longitudinal studies supported a relationship
between safety climate and injury severity (Johnson 2007).

While consensus does not exist, findings from construction safety climate/culture studies
suggest a set of core safety climate dimensions: management safety priority, safety manage-
ment, safety communication, and workgroup safety involvement (Seo et al. 2004). A Swedish
qualitative study of foremen and union safety representatives found that four main factors
contributed to high safety standards: project characteristics and nature of work; organizations
and structures; collective values, norms, and behaviors; individual competence and attitudes
(Torner & Pousette 2009). Respondents believed that these factors likely interact with and
mutually reinforce each other.

10
 Safety climate survey instruments were administered on two construction mega-projects
in the US (Las Vegas City Center) and UK (London Olympic Park). Data from the Las
Vegas City Center project, a site plagued by high fatality rates, revealed significant gaps
in safety perceptions among craft, foremen, superintendents, and executives. Data-driven
recommendations included greater involvement and visibility on safety by project man-
agement and greater empowerment of workers (Gittleman et al. 2010). On the London
Olympic Park construction project, safety climate data across all contractors was extremely
positive and was attributed to strong owner involvement, the scale and duration of the
project which allowed adequate time for safety initiatives to become embedded in standard
processes, consistent messaging, follow-through, and empowerment of tier one contractors
to establish their own processes and systems to meet goals (Healy & Sugden 2012).

Multiple cultures exist on construction sites and both trade acculturation/norms and the
presence of many smaller contractors and subcontractors complicate measurement and
improvement of safety culture and climate. Therefore, it is important to consider the level
at which safety climate data are aggregated and analyzed, because while there may be within
group homogeneity there is likely to be between group heterogeneity (Lingard et al. 2009).

Process - Organizers distributed a handout containing 10 safety culture and 10 safety climate
definitions obtained from both the peer-reviewed academic literature and from interviews
recently conducted with contractors and safety practitioners (See Figures 1a and 1b). Workgroups
reviewed and discussed each definition and were asked to select one for climate and one for
culture that they thought was most relevant for construction. Workgroups also had the option of
writing their own definition or modifying the ones provided. The groups reported back their
favorite definitions, and individual participants used an electronic audience response system to
vote on which they thought best reflected the concepts within the construction industry.

Figure 1a. Handout: Definitions of Safety Culture

1. Safety culture incorporates the values and norms and beliefs of a particular company.
2. Safety culture is a group’s initiatives, actions, exercises, processes, habits, training and education and
relationships, etc., that pool to establish the core principles and values of the group.
3. Safety culture is the overall mindset of what folks think about safety on the job site, that yes, we want
to be a safe company.
4. Safety culture is how people act when nobody’s watching.
5. Safety culture is a subset of the culture of the organization. It represents not necessarily well
articulated expressions of how and why things are done within the organization.
6. The safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, attitudes,
perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the
style and proficiency of an organization’s health and safety management. Organizations with a
positive safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared
perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures.
7. Shared values (what is important) and beliefs (how things work) that interact with a company’s
people, organizational structures and control systems to produce behavioral norms (the way we do
things around here).
8. Safety cultures reflect the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values that employees share in relation
to safety.

(continued on next page)

11
 9. Safety culture is the set of beliefs, norms, attitudes, roles, and social and technical practices that are
concerned with minimizing the exposure of employees, managers, customers and members of the
public to conditions considered dangerous or injurious.
10. Safety culture is the concept that the organization’s beliefs and attitudes, manifested in actions,
policies, and procedures, affect its safety performance

Figure 1b. Handout: Definitions of Safety Climate



1. Safety climate is what happens on a day to day basis, sort of a snapshot of what’s actually happening
and how employees perceive how the company is actually implementing safety on the ground.
2. Safety climate is how things are being done, you know how it really is right now, and is it really being
practiced? Is safety a major concern for the company, do they really care about safety or are they just
talking about it?
3. Safety climate is more of an encouragement, enabling and giving people the tools and education. It
is very much about support for the ability for people to perform their work safely.
4. Safety climate is the shared perceptions of the workforce at a given point in time as to the extent
hazard identification and injury performance are important to the organization as perceived by their
interactions with their direct supervisors.
5. The safety climate is the environment in which a company puts its safety culture to work. Like
providing the tools and equipment necessary, maybe the resources on our job sites to create that
environment in which people are allowed to work safely.
6. Safety climate is a leading indicator. It reflects how well the espoused safety program is ultimately
integrated into the organization to support safe effective practices at the point of operation.
7. Safety climate is the objective measurement of attitudes and perceptions toward occupational
health and safety issues.
8. Safety climate is a subset of organizational climate that measures through members’ perceptions the
degree of congruence between an organization’s espoused values and policies and enacted
practices.
9. Safety climate is the shared perceptions of organizational members about their work environment
and, more precisely, about their organizational safety policies.
10. Safety climate reflects shared perceptions of the relative priority of safety compared to other
competing organizational priorities.

Results - The safety culture definitions receiving the most votes were the original #7 and #8 from
Figure 1a and their preferred safety climate definitions were the original #6 and #10 in Figure 1b.
(See Tables 1 and 2)

12
Table 1. Participants’ top ranked choices for safety culture definition
Shared values (what is important) and beliefs (how things work) that interact with a company’s people, 30%
organizational structures and control systems to produce behavioral norms (the way we do things
around here).

Safety culture reflects the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values that leadership and employees 29%
share in relation to safety.

Safety culture reflects the stakeholders’ values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of 14%
behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of an organization’s health
and safety management.

Safety culture is the concept that the organization’s beliefs and attitudes, manifested in actions, 11%
policies, and procedures, affect its safety performance.

Safety culture reflects the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values that leadership and employees 9%
share in relation to safety. [Integrating safety into organizational and cultural operations]

The safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, 7%
perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style
and proficiency of an organization’s health and safety management. Organizations with a positive
safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of
the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures.

Table 2. Participants’ top ranked choices for safety climate definition

Safety Climate is a leading indicator. It reflects how well the espoused safety program is ultimately 33%
integrated into the organization to support safe effective practices at the point of operation.

Safety climate reflects shared perceptions of the relative priority of safety compared to other 23%
competing organizational priorities.

The safety climate is the environment in which a company puts its safety culture to work. Like 19%
providing the tools and equipment necessary, maybe the resources on our job sites to create that
environment in which people are allowed to work safely.

Safety climate is the shared perceptions of organizational members about their work environment 16%
and, more precisely, about their organizational safety policies.

Safety climate is a subset of organizational climate that measures through members’ perceptions the 9%
degree of congruence between an organization’s espoused values and policies and
enacted practices.

Summary - Defining safety culture and climate is essential for at least two reasons: 1) the terms are
used loosely and often in contradictory ways, and 2) it is not possible to accurately measure
ill-defined concepts. The primary goals of the framing session were to explore a variety of
definitional issues and attempt to identify agreed-upon working definitions for both safety culture
and safety climate. While the process did not meet the second goal, one-third of the participants
did agree on one definition for each concept and between a quarter and a third agreed on a
second one.
In an effort to move us closer to having a useful and measurable definition for both safety
culture and safety climate, we examined the voting results from the workshop and reviewed the
definitions presented in the published literature and provided by stakeholders during one-on-one

13
interviews. We found that although safety culture is more widely used, it is often used as a catchall
term to reflect organizational norms and members’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors. While in
popular usage the terms “safety culture” and “safety climate” are often seen as interchangeable,
they have specific and distinct meanings and therefore need to be measured differently. These
concerns led us to develop the definitions of safety culture and safety climate presented below that
meet the following criteria:

• Clarify the distinctions between culture and climate

• Facilitate assessment as well as intervention development and implementation
• Reflect that safety is not separate from but rather is integrally related to overall organiza-
tional operation and performance
• Account for the particular characteristics of the construction industry.

(Organizational) Safety Culture: Deeply held but often unspoken safety-related beliefs, attitudes, and values
that interact with an organization’s systems, practices, people, and leadership to establish norms about how
things are done in the organization. Safety culture is a subset of, and clearly influenced by, organizational
culture. Organizations often have multiple cultures or subcultures, and this may be particularly true in
construction.

(Organizational) Safety Climate: The shared perceptions of safety policies and procedures by members of
an organization at a given point in time, particularly regarding the adequacy of safety and consistency
between actual conditions compared to espoused safety policies and procedures. Homogeneous
subgroups tend to develop shared perceptions while between-group differences are not uncommon
within an organization.

Project Safety Climate: Perceptions of occupational safety and health on a particular construction project at
a given point in time. It is a product of the multiple safety climates from the different organizations involved
in the project including the project owner, construction manager/general contractor, and subcontractors.
Project safety climate may be heavily influenced by local conditions such as project delivery method,
schedule and planning, and incentives.

We chose not to define project safety culture here because it is more complicated. That is, an
owner or general contractor can attempt to transfer its internal safety culture onto a project, but
without pre-existing relationships with subcontractors, craft workers, and other project collabora-
tors it can be challenging to align values and norms. Beyond the construction-specific references
in the definitions themselves, we offer an additional caveat. The multi-employer and multi-trade
nature of the construction industry requires paying special attention to the presence of multiple,
possibly competing, cultures.
The two main concepts of safety culture and safety climate can be distinguished by how
each is measured and evaluated as discussed later in Chapters 2 and 3. One can obtain a superficial
understanding of an organization’s safety culture by doing an audit of the types of safety-related
programs and policies it implements (i.e., safety management systems). However, to obtain an
in-depth appreciation of the unspoken safety-related beliefs, attitudes, and values, more in-depth
methods -- such as case studies or ethnography -- are required. On the other hand, safety climate
is more easily measured by administering surveys to organizational members to assess their
perceptions of how well safety-related programs and policies are being implemented and enforced
to determine the congruence between espoused and enacted safety values. While people tend to
agree that safety culture, safety climate, and safety management systems are different, they are

14
related. That is, having a culture where leaders are engaged is separate from effectively imple-
menting specific systems, but in practice the two are likely to be highly correlated.
In the remainder of this report we will use the term safety climate when discussing issues
pertaining to assessment and intervention because we believe it reflects the definitions above and
actual practice in construction. We also avoid implying that culture can be measured and changed
quickly and easily. In the conclusion section we return to using both terms as we propose action
steps to address them within the construction industry.

15
Chapter 2: Leading Indicators: Key Factors that
Contribute to Safety Climate

The primary objectives of this session were to:

1. Describe current thinking on which leading indicators (i.e., factors) can reliably predict
safety climate and the relationship between safety climate and safety outcomes.
2. Describe the most critical factors comprising safety climate for the construction
industry.

Academic researchers and practitioners use different terms to describe the various influential
aspects of organizational or worksite safety climate. In academic parlance, both terms are consid-
ered to be constructs or theoretical ideas that encompass one or more factors; sometimes called
dimensions, determinants, antecedents, or drivers. We decided to use the term ‘factor’ in the
workshop. Individual factors can be measured, often using surveys, and the results obtained can
be combined to reflect the strength of the construct.
In the construction industry, the more typical gauge of a company’s commitment to safety
and health was their injury and illness rate, also called lagging indicators. Over the last 10 years or
so, the practice in some, particularly larger, companies has shifted to relying on ‘leading indica-
tors’. This term comes from the field of economics and is defined as: Measurable factors of
economic performance that change ahead of the underlying economic cycle starts to follow a
particular direction or trend. ….Major leading indicators include orders for durable goods, orders
for plant and equipment, new housing starts, change in raw material prices, corporate profits and
share prices, business formation and failures, and money supply.(www.BusinessDictionary.com
accessed 12/30/13). While the leading indicators (i.e., factors) of safety climate are different than
those in this definition, the underlying premise is the same; they are used to forecast end out-
comes. In our case we are not talking about economic climate, but rather safety climate and
ultimately safety and health outcomes (injury/illness). While there is yet to be agreement on the
specific leading factors/indicators that comprise or predict a positive safety climate, we gained
some insight from our trigger speakers and from the workshop participants.
Trigger speaker - Dr. Ben Amick, Professor at the University of Texas and the Institute for
Work and Health in Ontario Canada, kicked off the session by speaking about current perspec-
tives and research on leading indicators for safety and health and how safety culture and climate
fit into this bigger picture.
There has been a big push towards using leading indicators as organizational performance
metrics. He suggested that the questions to pose about methods for measuring indicators include:
How much do we want the measurement instrument to be evidence-based? What does that
mean? Are we looking for instruments that will work across industries and trades? Do we want to
use them to conduct gap analyses? Answering these questions requires research.
Dr. Amick reported that the research he has been conducting to develop an instrument to
measure safety climate has been quite humbling. He presented eight questions for identifying
leading indicators that were developed by Ontario safety and workers’ compensation practitioners
(Institute for Work and Health 2011). He noted that they were the same ones that emerged from
his more “rigorous, painstaking” research. He has also concluded that it will be critical as we move
forward in this area to develop and test safety climate indicators that can help direct changes to

16
improve safety climate. For example, safety audit findings should be discussed within organizations
to help guide their follow-up intervention activities. Regarding the difference between safety
climate and culture, Dr Amick noted that safety culture is more complicated and therefore more
difficult to understand and measure, that currently there is no good science on how best to change
a culture, and that while it takes time to develop a positive organizational (and safety) culture, it
can be destroyed quickly. (A link to the Institute for Work and Health report and leading indicators
is provided in Appendix 4)
Process - Participants were asked to share their thoughts on the most important factors they
believed influenced construction safety climate. Each workgroup generated a list of factors, then
multi-voted to select the six they believe were most important and relevant for the construction
industry. Each workgroup reported back their top six factors at the end of the session (see Table
3). Individual participants were then given the opportunity to review the full list of factors and
vote on the ones they believe were most important for influencing a company’s safety climate.
Results - Due to overlap, the planning committee was able to combine the initial 36 factors
reported out by the workgroups into 13 overarching ones (see Table 3). The reader will notice
there is still some overlap in meanings provided but there was enough dissimilarity that we chose
not to group the factors any further.

Table 3. Unique factors identified by the six workgroups

Factor Factor meaning or components that would be measured
Communication • Active engagement, continuously facilitated
• Two-way open communication
• No fear of reprisal, no filtering
• Multilingual
• Safety metrics visible and shared with everyone
• Up, down, and lateral among hierarchy, colleagues, peers, and subcontractors
• Experienced-to-inexperienced peer communication
• Communicates early wins throughout organization
Accountability at • Walking the walk and talking the talk, even when no one is watching
all levels • Actions speak louder than words
• Being authentic
• Is shared across the organization, with discipline to follow accountability
Safety valued • Shared vision, with everyone on the same page
and aligned with • Clear roles and responsibilities
production • Safety is valued equal to or greater than production, and everyone in the organization
provides that answer from the top of the organization all the way down
• Behaviors reinforce values – such as supporting stopping work if not meeting safety rules.
• Won’t low bid work if it compromises safety
• Embracing good practice such as Prevention through Design (PtD)
• Safety is integrated into planning and is “part of everything we do”.
Employee • Integral part of team – empowered and involved in hazard assessment and pre-task planning.
involvement/ • Engaging those closest to the risk
empowerment • Collaborative environment and being each other’s’ keepers (active caring) and willingness
to interact
• No retaliation
• Have stop work authority
• Involvement is backed up by policy
• Effective safety committees

(continued on next page)

17
 Factor Factor meaning or components that would be measured
Training/Education • Education provided to employees
at all levels • Supportive environment for training
• Continual verification of training
• Making sure that training is communicated to all workers and that training is assessed correctly
• Training includes supervisors and workers
Mutual trust • Consistent response and fair treatment
• Free and transparent flow of information
• No fear of recrimination
• Employees trust that supervisors do not dismiss safety and health
• Employees trust supervisors to do what they say they will do, to back them up when
they are right, and to tell them when they are doing something wrong.
Leadership • Leaders are visible on safety and provide needed resources
involvement • Are involved with creating safety goals and metrics, and performance evaluation includes safety
• Are aware of true impact on safety
• Leaders are competent and creative on safety
• Safety becomes part of the corporate strategy
• Upper management sends safety signals to supervisors
• Site leadership and foremen/crew leaders are involved with safety and set an example
• Leadership is clearly engaged in managing changes in process
• Leadership defines vision, explains the need for change, and provides tools to implement changes
• Measures the results of change and makes adjustments where needed
• Superintendent and foremen have safety support and provide safety leadership to the crew.
• The foremen sets the safety tone on the jobsite
• The foremen is selected or promoted for safety skills, training, attitude and model safety behavior
Management • Management is committed to a shared vision of safety and health
commitment • Management is committed to integrating productivity, safety, and quality
Programs, policies, • Safety systems are established and institutionalized
procedures, practices • Programs and policies show commitment to safety
• Policies and practices – the “rules of the game” support safety and health
Job planning • Safety requires involvement in the planning of the phases of construction
Safety and health • The Safety and Health program or system is clearly defined, and is uniformly implemented
programs/systems and enforced
activity • It is communicated to employees
• It provides proper safety training to employees
• It is proactive, not reactive
• Regular audits with clear action plans are used
• There are clear learning indicators as part of accountability
• It focuses on near misses
• It encourages employee involvement
Owner/client • The owner sets expectations for safety
involvement • The owner includes safety in bid specifications
• The owner provides for adequate resources and an adequate schedule to support safety
• The owner supports Prevention through Design (e.g., Design for safety)
General contractor/ • The GC/CM sets safety expectations with subcontractors
construction manager • Includes safety in selecting subcontractors
management of • Communicates/empowers subs on safety
subcontractors • Instills pride and provides adequate resources for safety

The six receiving the most votes and thus identified for further elaboration and discussion in
subsequent sessions are listed in Table 4.

18
Table 4. Factors voted on for further discussion
Factor Average percent of vote over three votes

Employee involvement/empowerment 26.0% (Top 2nd and 3rd choice)

Management commitment 22.6% (Top 1st choice)

Safety valued and aligned with production 11.6%

Owner/Client involvement 9.3%

Site safety (supervisory) leadership 9.3%

Accountability at all levels 8.0%

Summary - Workshop groups and then individual participants voted on safety climate related
factors they believe most influence construction safety climate. Most mirrored the core dimen-
sions presented by Seo (2004) mentioned above: management safety priority, safety management,
safety communication, and workgroup safety involvement. While there is overlap and although
two -- employee involvement and management commitment – were considered by a third of the
group to be the top influences on safety climate, none received a majority of votes. This suggests
that not only do a variety of factors influence safety climate on construction projects, there may
be definitional issues whereby participants assigned similar meanings to different concepts and
constructs or vice versa. This will be discussed further in the conclusion section.

19
Chapter 3: Assessing Safety Climate

The primary objectives of this session were to:

1. Discuss safety climate assessment in construction.
2. Describe how safety climate can be used as a leading indicator of safety performance.
3. Explain the difference between surveys and rubrics and when it may be more useful to use
one rather than the other.

As mentioned above, while a company’s safety culture and its’ safety climate are typically highly
related, climate is the more visible of the two constructs. It is discernible via the enactment of
programs and policies, is more easily measured and is often conceptualized as taking safety
culture’s “temperature.” Safety climate is typically measured using perception surveys containing
question items that are comprised by specific factors. Safety climate surveys are often used to
quickly assess safety culture at a particular point in time. Some even refer to these findings as a
measure of safety culture.
Trigger speakers - Mr. Tony O’Dea, VP for Safety at Gilbane Construction provided a large
general contractor/construction manager’s perspective on techniques and tools his company has
used to measure safety climate or culture on job sites and company-wide. He described two key
questions that guide his efforts: 1) How do you recognize if you have a positive safety culture? 2)
How do you know if it is getting results? The presentation mentioned senior leadership activities
such as participating in an “Incident and Injury Free CEO forum” as well as foremen safety
communication workshops, audits of daily Safety Task Assignments, and craft engagement efforts.
(Presentation available at http://www.cpwr.com/safety-culture).
The second speaker, Mr. Tony Barsotti, Director of Safety and Quality Assurance at Temp
Control Mechanical (TCM), provided the perspective of a medium-sized firm active in improving
its safety culture and climate. He shared three working assumptions that guide his efforts: 1)
Construction organizations cannot create a strong safety culture without aligning all project
delivery systems and organizational objectives; 2) Leadership alignment across roles is critical to
strategic change; and 3) Assessing safety culture/climate maturity level may be helpful to organi-
zational change but is not sufficient in and of itself. He also described how TCM has worked with
academic researchers on safety and safety culture issues and described recent initiatives to im-
prove task planning and active safety leadership. He shared the results of TCM safety climate
surveys. (Presentation available at http://www.cpwr.com/safety-culture).
The third and final speaker for the session, Dr. Tahira Probst from Washington State
University-Vancouver, provided a researcher’s perspective on climate and culture measurement in
which she raised a number of thought-provoking issues:

The difference between safety culture and safety climate is substantive, not simply seman-
tic. Culture is the assumptions, values, and philosophies that permeate multiple facets of an
organization, while climate is what we measure and reflects the shared perceptions of what is
rewarded, expected, valued, and reinforced in the workplace.

There is a difference between the level of safety climate perceptions (e.g., positive or nega-
tive), and the strength (intensity) of those perceptions, and that to detect these types of per-

20
 ception differences, it’s important to collect data from across the organization but to analyze
them at the appropriate level – organization, department, workgroup, rather than combine
data to obtain one result.

Global measures of safety climate tend to be validated, provide generalizable information

across industries, and can be used for benchmarking however they may be too broad to
provide actionable information. Organization-specific measures are expensive to create, tend
to be idiosyncratic and have unknown reliability and validity, but are more useful for
providing companies with actionable data for making improvements.

Practitioners typically want to use safety climate/culture data to improve

safety or address a particular safety concern within a specific organization, Rubrics provide a
while researchers may be more interested in contributing generalizable qualitative description
knowledge that will increase our scientific understanding of safety and
of a company’s safety
potentially benefit all organizations.
climate activities.
(Presentations are available at http://www.cpwr.com/safety-culture).

Process - The workgroup discussions for this session began by reviewing the hand-
out titled: “Selected Safety Culture/Climate Assessment Tools” (see Appendix 4),
which lists 12 tools and surveys representing a variety of assessment approaches. Next,
participants were asked to react, share and discuss the issues raised by the trigger speakers about
evaluation and measurement by answering and discussing the following questions:

• Has anyone in the group done evaluation of safety culture and climate?
• If so, what did they do and how did it go?
• Are there construction-specific evaluation issues? What are they? How can they affect
evaluation?
• What do you think are key evaluation issues that deserve to be shared with the larger
construction community?

Next, a group exercise introduced the idea of using a ‘rubric’ approach for assessing a company’s
safety climate. For workshop purposes, a rubric was defined as: A scoring tool that includes a set of
criteria for assessing achievement of a particular type of work or performance.
The value of the rubric approach is that it provides a qualitative description of the various
elements or activities that reflect a company’s improving safety climate rather than thinking of
it as a simple binary outcome of present or absent. The levels of the rubric reflect the maturity
of a company with respect to specific factors, or aspects, of safety climate. The maturity levels
used in the exercise were based on a 2006 article by Diane Parker and colleagues in the UK
which was based on earlier work by Westrum (Parker et al. 2006). The modified labels and
meanings are as follows:

• Dysfunctional - Who cares about safety as long as we are not caught?

• Reactive - Safety is important: we do a lot every time we have an accident.
• Compliant - We have systems in place to manage all hazards.
• Proactive - We try to anticipate safety problems before they arise.
• Exemplary - Health and Safety is just how we do business around here.

21
 Two handouts provided participants with examples of already developed rubrics. Appendix 2
contains the Parker rubric and Appendix 3 contains the OSHA I2P2 questionnaire designed to
evaluate construction safety and health programs reformatted into a rubric rather than a multiple-
choice survey.
Each group was assigned two of the top factors voted for in Session 2 (some groups
identified others they wanted to discuss). They developed a rubric for each factor by: 1) creating a
list of activities or criteria that illustrate key aspects of the factors and 2) articulated gradations of
those activities to describe either the levels of quality (ranging from bad to good) or development
(ranging from beginning to mastery). They were also asked to consider and articulate how the
activities/criteria would change as a company demonstrated a more positive safety climate.
Results - The workgroups took different approaches to these exercises. Some spent more
time on general discussions about evaluation instead of, or in addition to, creating the rubric for
their assigned factors. Others focused only on developing the rubric. Table 5 combines the
individual groups’ efforts into a comprehensive rubric text. While communication, training, trust,
and espoused/enacted safety values did not make the top 6 factors voted on in Session 2, some of
the groups chose to create a rubric for them anyway. We decided to present all of the workgroup’s
efforts rather than limit it to the rubrics developed for the top 6 factors.

Table 5. Rubric developed by workshop groups for top ranked factors

Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Accountability at all levels
Leaders have no formal Projects with poor Safety performance Safety-focused Leaders hold
safety training. They are safety performance information is collected curriculum, developed themselves accountable
not held accountable have some but not communicated and provided internally, for safety program
for safety. Their consequences for to supervisors. Safety is directed towards conformance and
safety-based supervisors. goals are set to OSHA supervisors and other communicate
performance is not BLS leaders. Injury rate goals commitment and
included in are set and measured. expectations to all
management Safety goals set to business partners.
performance reviews. better OSHA recordable Performance is
Bonuses are dictated by rate. Managers are evaluated based on
injuries reported, which rewarded or recognized leading as well as
discourages reporting. for superior safety trailing measures.
performance. Safety metrics are
benchmarked against
peers and internal CQI.
Safety is the
determining factor in
hiring managers and
sub-contractors, and
promotions.
Communication
Management Management responds Supervisors pass on Employees are Employees actively
discourages safety to employee complaints safety information as encouraged to report engaged in
suggestions and when expressed. required by safety concerns and communicating about
safety-related reporting Employees are management. Injury issues. Employees safety. They are
(injuries, hazards). sporadically provided reports are filed as participate in incident rewarded for raising
with informal feedback required. There is no reviews. Supervisor concerns and reporting
on hazard reports and overt reprisal for actively initiates safety near misses, and they
accident/injury employees who report discussion with get timely feedback
information. injuries or hazards. employee after action. Employees
and supervisors actively
plan all tasks including
safety. There is a formal
system to share incident
information.

22
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Employee involvement/ empowerment
Management isn’t Safety committee Management shares Management realizes Standing safety
interested in involving meets only when information with the importance of committee focuses on
workers in safety someone is hurt and workers and does a lot involving employees in solving specific
discussions. There is no safety messages are of talking but there are solving safety problems problems identified by
safety committee. passed down to few engagement and reducing hazards. workers and others,
employees from opportunities with There is a management- communicates with
management. Interest workers. Standing labor standing safety workers about
diminishes over time. safety committee may committee that resolutions, and
exist but the meetings provides suggestions workers are able to
last only a few minutes. and makes observe changes and
recommendations. provide additional
feedback
Management Commitment
Management is mostly Management gets Managers conform to Management initiates Management addresses
not visible on site. They involved after injury OSHA regulations and and actively engages in safety in every meeting
don’t participate in and may suspend or fire participate in safety participation with and is constantly
safety audits. When employees who get audits. Safety safety audits. working to improve
they are on-site, they injured. Management compliance based on Management meets conditions and reduce
are oblivious to safety enforces safety rules owner or regulatory with craft workers to hazards. External
and don’t follow safety only after an incident or directives ask for advice regarding auditing of top
rules or role-model when audit results are hazard reduction. management,
good safety behavior. negative Management conducts management
spontaneous site visits involvement, and
and rewards safe analyzing safety trends
behavior. Leadership and formulating
participates in safety corrective actions
program development
and provides safety
resources
Safety as value/ Safety Alignment
Safety is simply a cost Safety is important Meeting minimum Safety and health Vertically and
and considered a except when fall behind OSHA requirements. included in the bid. horizontally integrated.
necessary evil. Focus is (and on Saturdays – on They measure lagging Company does not use Everything (meetings,
on productivity. There is the theory that no indicators only. low bid for etc.) starts with safety.
no safety budget. All OSHA inspectors work subcontractor selection. Safety is never
errors are bad and are on Saturdays.) Subcontractor selection compromised for
punished. Perception is based on their S&H productivity. There are
that employees are program. Principles of effective policies and
unsafe vs. the Prevention through procedures and H&S is
environment in which Design (PtD) are used. fully integrated into
they work. Believe that operational programs.
construction is Company measures and
inherently dangerous uses leading indicators
and nothing can be to improve safety
done to change it. The climate on worksites.
bid actually includes a Prevention through
budget for OSHA fines. Design (PtD) is
seamless.

(continued on next page)

23
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Supervisory leadership
Manage and punish Management Management supports Supervisor participates Supervisors show deep
through intimidation. concerned with safety safety program and in and initiates safety commitment to safety
The focus is on the only after accident/ policies. program activities for and inspire/motivate
individual not the incident. Supervisors continuous worker to share that
process. There is no focus on individual improvement. Seeks level of commitment.
safety-related vision or behaviors. advice from and Establishes clear roles
leadership. Blame game includes workers in all and responsibilities for
is often played vs. root aspects. safety but instills a
cause analysis. sense of safety
Employees are easily ownership at all levels
replaced if injured and – horizontally and
there is no vertically. Supervisor
understanding or conveys personal vision
knowledge of for safety at start of
regulatory meetings, and safety is
requirements. a major component at
meetings. Supervisors
are effective
communicators and are
able to coach and teach
safety to workers.
Encourages changes
and continuous
learning. Leads by
example
Training
Company doesn’t care Leaders required to Leaders required to Leadership Companies implement
about training. obtain OSHA 10-hour obtain OSHA 30-hour acknowledges the a Safety Trained
Fraudulent training certificate. Training is certificate. An importance of training Supervisor program
cards are accepted. implemented after off-the-shelf curriculum and testing knowledge certification.
accident only. Training is used to meet OSHA and skills obtained. Comprehensive training
is aimed at the and management Safety Curriculum using adult learning
individual worker. system training developed and principles (interactive) is
Training effort requirements. administered by the provided on an
diminishes over time. Instructors have company. Instructors on-going basis. Highly
minimal qualifications... are qualified trainers. trained instructors are
Majority of training is Training needs may be used. Supervisor-
provided via toolbox initiated by workers. specific training as well
talks. Training records Supervisors get training as peer-to-peer training
are kept. on safety skills as well as are implemented.
OSHA standards. Workers are integral to
identifying training
needs and developing
materials rather than
simply passive
recipients.

24
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Owner/Client involvement
Owners/clients do not Contractors excluded Prequalification using Owner safety There is a company rep
require safety from bidding after ‘par’ or industry average expectations onsite to monitor and
qualification from safety incident or poor lagging indicators only. communicated to GC assist with safety
sub-contractors (and safety performance GC and SC must comply and SCs and enforced program
GC/CM?) and only use with all federal, state on site through owner implementation.
the lowest bid as and local safety rules. oversight. There is a site Unlimited resources for
selection criterion. Have conventional specific safety template safety. Safety is an
insurance (not owner for each job integral part of the bid
supplied); low bid is still specs. Owner is
a criterion. involved in daily
planning meetings.
Owner is onsite and
makes connection with
employees. Owner
participates in
employee orientation.
Design for safety
(prevention through
design). Building
Information Modeling
(BIM) enabled and
includes workers.
Prequalifying General
contractors and
Subcontractors on
safety replaces low bid.
There is a formal
mechanism for
submitting anonymous
complaints.
Trust
Workers do not trust When an accident Near miss reporting Workers trust that Supervisors and
that supervisor will take happens, I trust that encouraged. Workers supervisors and the workers work as a team
care of them and they there will be an are encouraged to company care for their and have mutual trust
don’t believe what is investigation. Reports report hazardous safety. Injury and and caring for each
said. Injury reporting is of hazards will be conditions and those near-miss reporting is other. Injury and near
discouraged or responded to but reports are taken strongly encouraged. miss reporting is
suppressed. Workers are perhaps not in a timely seriously Hazard identification is expected because it is
afraid to report hazards manner. a joint labor- the norm. When a
for fear of getting fired. management effort and supervisor identifies an
hazards are corrected unsafe behavior the
quickly before someone worker trusts him/her
gets hurt. Workers have to correct it without
the right to stop work if reprisal. Workers are
they feel it is unsafe. encouraged to stop
work whenever they
feel unsafe conditions
exist and rewarded for
doing so.
Espoused/ enacted safety values
We don’t know what If somebody makes us We have a low bar and Company enacts safety Management system
the rules are and we we will do it or if there is we go above that bar. values through elements are clearly
don’t care. There is no an accident or May have a safety programs, policies and defined and
safety management inspection. System is management system works on continuously communicated and
system. activated only after an but it meets the bare improving safety implemented beyond
incident. Enactment requirements by laws. climate. requirements.
deteriorates over time Management and
workers go beyond
system to keep
improving.
Requirements/policies
are well defined and
performance is verified
and implemented.

25
 Summary - As noted by Dr. Probst, although general safety climate surveys are the dominant
method for collecting data to measure safety climate, they may not be ideal for learning where
change is needed to improve safety climate and to see if it improves after a change is made. It is
important to look at the relative merits of surveys, rubrics, and other methods when deciding the
best approach to use.
A simple audit tool could be used to check-off whether or not an organization is imple-
menting safety related programs and policies such as a near-miss reporting system, stop-work
authority to empower workers, etc. But such a tool would not allow one to measure organization-
al member’s perceptions of how well these programs are being enacted and the degree to which
they improve the safety climate on site.
The first critical steps to measuring safety climate are to identify the most important
factors or leading indicators that comprise it, and also the specific characteristics or aspects of
those indicators. The activities in Session 1 gave participants the experience of taking these
critical steps. For example, they identified communication as being an important factor/indicator
and then determined that: active engagement, continuously facilitated, two-way open communi-
cation, no fear of reprisal, no filtering, multilingual, safety metrics visible and shared with every-
one, up, down, and lateral among hierarchy, colleagues, peers, and subcontractors and experi-
enced-to-inexperienced peer communication were the aspects of communication that would need
to be present for a positive safety climate. Additional work still needs to be done by researchers in
partnership with construction industry practitioners to determine and agree on the most critical
factors and related aspects for an ideal or exemplary safety climate, and then to develop reliable
and valid survey items to measure them.
This session also provided participants with a method for measuring an organization’s level
of maturity with respect to safety. An audit tool with numeric ratings could be developed to
measure the various elements of the qualitative rubric. Ratings could be combined to provide
companies with an overall maturity rating as well as point out specific issues they could improve
to move up to become a more exemplary company with respect to their safety culture and climate.

26
Chapter 4: Interventions to Improve Safety Climate

The primary objectives of this session were to:

1. Identify interventions to improve safety climate factors/indicators.
2. Discuss practical considerations and tips for successfully implementing identified interven-
tions, including barriers to successful implementation.

Trigger speaker - Carl Heinlein, Senior Safety Consultant for the American Contractors Insurance
Group (ACIG), works with over 40 member construction companies helping them improve their
safety performance. He spoke about the ACIG Strategic Safety Initiative which includes develop-
ing a contractor action plan (CAP) based on data collected using Safety Benchmarking, a Life-
Saving Commitment Survey, and a third party Safety Culture Survey. As an outcome of these
efforts, ACIG has identified a top ten “best practices” for improving safety performance including:

1. Executive level support- high level of expectation

2. Pre-task planning for every task
3. Management visibility
4. Supervision involvement and accountability
5. Root cause analysis of incidents
6. Measurement and frequent review of key indicators
7. Active Risk Management Committee
8. Pre-project planning
9. Subcontractor safety management
10. Employee engagement/involvement.

Mr. Heinlein noted that at least four of the top ten practices (1,3,4,and 10) were viewed as
strongly related to improving safety climate and that the others could be indirectly linked as well.
(Presentations are available at http://www.cpwr.com/safety-culture)
Process - First, each workgroup reviewed a categorized list of potential interventions
developed for the workshop (see Appendix 3) and identified those they believe could address the
factors they had worked in in the previous session. The group was asked to look at the interven-
tions from both an implementation and program maturity perspective related to the rubrics they
developed earlier.  Specifically, they were asked: 1) Think about how intervention implementation
could be made easier. 2) What steps would an organization need to make to be able to implement
the intervention(s) and thus become more mature from a safety climate perspective?  3) What are
the “lessons learned” about successful implementation that are worth sharing with the larger
construction community? Finally, participants were asked to discuss specific issues related to their
solutions including;
• How the interventions could be promoted throughout the industry, both for large and
small contractors (i.e., Possible methods and channels for getting the word out about par-
ticular solutions)
• How contractors could be motivated to adopt the interventions, and
• How adoption could be made easier? (i.e., barrier reduction or elimination)

27
Results - Table 6 lists the interventions the groups discussed for the factors identified in earlier
session.

Table 6. Interventions to address factors and improve safety climate

Factor Interventions
Supervisory • Include safety in the strategic planning process
Leadership • Define safety roles and responsibilities
• Lead by example
• Promote a continuous learning environment
• Hold people accountable for safety
• Have senior leaders visible on safety issues,
• Safety communications from leadership
• Supervisors “walking the talk”
Safety as a value/ Safety behavior/attitude used in hiring and promotion decisions.
safety alignment • Safety as an objective at all levels of the organization
• Safety included in the planning and bidding process
• Safety should never be compromised by production
• Positive reinforcements for safety and metrics to show continuous improvement.
• Aligning safety and productivity
• Including safety at production and planning meetings
Management • Safety addressed as the first item on the agenda at every meeting.
commitment • Adequate budget for safety
• Safety always included in pre-task planning.
• Reward safety processes, not outcomes.
• Management should make spontaneous safety visits.
Employee • Safety committees that can address a wide range of issues. The right people must be chosen. The
empowerment /and committee must have clear objectives, a role in planning, communicate expectations to management and
involvement have the authority to make decisions.
• Stop work authority
• No fear of reporting
• Participation in JSA/JHA preparation and audits.
• Employees involved in tailgate problem solving sessions.
Accountability • Fairness of the system
• Consistency of enforcement.
• Accountability for near misses
• External audits of top management safety involvement
• Using leading indicators was stressed
• Benchmarking against others
• Active surveillance of injuries and hazards by field supervisors
• Accountability/performance reviews of interactions
Communication • Engage employees in communication
• Supervisors actively initiate discussions about safety
• Formally share incident information
• Give timely feedback on reports.
• Venues include JHA/toolbox talks, new employee orientation, crew level meetings
• Mentoring and storytelling
• Employers should identify informal leaders to help in communicating and address any issues with
literacy levels
• Transparency, (e.g., a safety communications newsletter)

28
 Factor Interventions
Training • Empowerment training for workers
• Leadership training for foremen and supervisors as well as coaching
• Training for senior management • Joint safety committee training. Training on solutions (solving safety
problems) is useful. Training should consider the point of view of “what’s in it for me?” Transfer of the
training to others may be an issue. The amount of training is not as important as the quality of the
training.
• Coaching supervisors
• Train supervisors on communication skills and leadership, listening skills
Owner/Client • Owner Controlled Insurance Program (OCIP) gives owner “skin in the game.”
Involvement • Owners representative on site and be involved in orientation training
• Include safety in bid specs
• Focus on design for safety/Prevention through Design
• Use safety performance as a prequalification for bids.
• Hold a pre-job meeting on safety with the GCs, subs and labor.
• Owner audits safety performance on site
• Leading metrics should be used in evaluating bids.
• Owners can solicit anonymous complaints to ensure no retaliation for raising safety issues.

Notes: Items are not in ranked order; Solutions for the Trust and Espoused/enacted safety values factors
identified earlier were not addressed by any of the groups.

In addition to the interventions, some barriers believed to inhibit implementation of proposed

solutions were also noted (see Table 7). Some are well known, such as resource constraints in the
industry. For example, while the value of root cause investigations is widely acknowledged, it is a
difficult program to implement due to barriers such as lack of time and resources. Or, if low bid is
the sole or primary criterion for selection of a general contractor, construction manager, or
subcontractors, it becomes more difficult to insist on safety-related activities that require upfront
investment. Smaller companies often feel the pinch of resource demands more than larger
organizations, although smaller contractors also have advantages in terms of lesser distance and
fewer layers between management and frontline workers. Table 7 contains the barriers to imple-
menting safety climate interventions raised by workshop participants.

Table 7. Barriers to implementing interventions to improve safety climate

Construction schedules Perceived lack of time and resources

Organizational silos Company size

Short-term perspective Lack of supervisor expertise and knowledge

Low-bid contracts Complacency

Misperception that safety hurts profits Lack of management support

Summary - Simply assessing safety climate is not enough. Once an issue related to one or more of
the factors is identified, it needs to be addressed and improved. For example, if workers say they
do not feel comfortable raising safety issues, even though they have been told the policy to do so
is in place, then it is critical that management intervene to make them feel more comfortable. It
requires more than just policy pronouncements to improve safety climate. For example, workers

29
need to see that reporting injuries and hazards is rewarded rather than punished. Some interven-
tions may be new, some may arise out of existing safety program elements, and others may address
larger organizational issues.
A number of the interventions, including planning for safety, came up across several factors
and are worth discussing a bit more. By including safety early in the planning process, safety
climate and safety related outcomes are likely to improve. The workshop participants recom-
mended including safety in the design phase, in the bid specifications, in production and planning
meetings, in pre-task planning and even in pre-job meetings with the owners. Some of the
barriers presented in Table 7 clearly provide challenges to incorporating safety into planning. Per-
sonnel can communicate and work across intra-organizational lines on a day-to-day basis in the
immediate work of construction, but to achieve true integration of safety into operations and
long-term planning management must insist on and support such collaborations. Because con-
struction projects involve multiple organizations, owners play an important leadership role as
reflected in factors identified and listed in Table 6. Case studies of how strong owners overcome
some of the barriers can provide models to promote throughout the industry.
Another cross-cutting intervention is for contractors to provide a continuous learning
environment and be open to new ideas on how to improve safety. One way to do this is through
training and education. The types of training recommended included: empowerment training for
workers; leadership education for supervisors, including communication, listening, and coaching
skills; training for senior management to understand how safety fits in to and affects quality and
production, and their own critical role in leading the safety effort; joint safety committee training;
and training in safety interventions. Participants noted that quality of training was much more
important than quantity and considerable time is wasted on mandatory but poor quality training
classes. Trainers should consider the point of view of the trainee (“what’s in it for me?”). In the
dynamic environment of a construction project, having everyone on the site up to speed with the
needed knowledge and experience is a constant challenge. This heightens the need for frontline
supervision to have the training and expertise to manage, supervise, and engage their crews with
respect to safety.
Communication was identified as critical to creating and maintaining a positive safety
climate. Safety-related communication from the company and from supervisors was perceived as
very important, and forums for this to happen include toolbox talks, employee orientations, and
crew level meetings. Safety newsletters can be used to share timely information about incidents
and actions taken. Regardless of mode used, workers’ language and literacy level need to be taken
into consideration.

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Chapter 5: Next Steps for Bridging the Gap and Moving Forward

The primary objectives of this final session were to:

1. Summarize the earlier discussions and identify:
a. areas of agreement, disagreement and uncertainty,
b. current and future needs,
c. steps to carry the workshop discussion forward toward action.

Process - Steve Hecker facilitated an open discussion based on the following trigger questions:

A. What are the most important questions that remain unanswered?

B. Are there industry-researcher partnerships that can help answer these questions?
C. Are there new ideas for promoting the use of leading indicators?

Comments were recorded and some illustrative quotes are presented below.

Results - A. Unanswered questions

The participants believed that the most important unanswered questions about safety
culture and safety climate in construction are:
• How can safety-related changes be made and maintained in individual organizations
and in the industry as a whole?
• What are some strategies for convincing CEOs to invest in integrating safety into
the business?

A few illustrative quotes from participants addressing this include:

“There is a salesmanship element to it. Concept of entrepreneur to sell safety within the organization.”

“Organizations are on a bell curve in terms of safety culture and safety. Those at this workshop are at
one tail of the curve because we’re talking about it at all. You have to start with organizations that do
‘get it.’ It’s important to help good organizations get better and identify the things that are succeeding,
and we can help define and articulate those things. The rubric may be a useful tool because it helps
explain what different levels look like in organizations vis-a-vis particular practices or structures.”

“Organizational and cultural change take time. Academics like to take one small intervention at a time
and study it, but that’s not how organizations change. It’s more complex and multi-dimensional, but you
have to have management systems in place and you have to measure meaningful things in terms of
programs, practices, and leadership. We don’t have to have all the answers from the start, but when
proposing changes to leaders they [the changes] need to at least have face validity.”

(continued on next page)

31
 “Culture is complex and takes time to change, but it is also dynamic and gets reinvented all the time by
changing small things. Small things do add up to larger change.”

“CEOs do listen to other CEOs, probably more than to safety professionals in their own organizations.
Use all opportunities for CEOs who get it to speak to those further back on the curve.”

B. Academic-Industry partnerships
Participants thought academics need to partner with industry to test out interventions and
demonstrate their effectiveness at improving safety climate. Many were eager to help.

[Industry partner] “We do need more intervention effectiveness research to demonstrate that particular
solutions are effective and practical. It also has to be shown to be scalable for smaller contractors. Best
approach to this may be mentoring from early adopters.”

[industry partner] “Some of us have senior management and CEOs to help move things. We can take
particular action items and try them out, but we need products from the workshop to do this.”

C. Leading indicators
Participants wanted to focus on addressing leading indicators and showing how safety climate can
be useful (e.g., does it improve safety outcomes like injuries).

“As safety practitioners we are still guilty of using lagging indicators. We do it by default without clearly
stating the limitations. We need to move the dialogue on acceptable risk for the firm, segment, and
industry level with valid measures of hazard identification and control. There are tools like
ConstructSecure but we need to go further.”

“We need to figure out how to put culture into the equation.”

“Get input from CEOs to make sure we’re on the right track.”

“Pay attention to demographic shifts in the workforce. It’s a good time to promote new ideas and ways
of doing things.” “Put out a work product from this workshop for those organizations that are ready to
move on this.” “Create case studies that can be shared.”

32
Expected Products from the Workshop - The planning committee has identified a number of
workshop products:

• This workshop report.

• Posting of all workshop materials on CPWR’s website (http://www.cpwr.com/safety-culture).

• Two publications:
– A review of the safety climate and culture literature specific to construction.
– Results from a qualitative interview study of construction industry stakeholders about
safety climate and safety management systems.

• Findings from a 4-month post-workshop follow-up survey to assess the degree to which
participants have used the information obtained at the workshop.

• A listserv and/or working group designed to keep the dialogue going and to identify ways
for researchers to partner with industry to keep the research grounded in the reality of the
construction industry.

33
Chapter 6: Recommendations and Conclusions

Recall that a primary impetus behind the workshop was the National Occupational Research
Agenda’s (NORA) strategic and intermediate goals pertaining to “Construction Culture,” which are:

STRATEGIC GOAL 8.0: Increase understanding of factors that contribute to safety culture and climate in
the construction industry and improve sector capabilities to evaluate and improve practices at the policy,
organizational, and individual level. Promote increased attention to safety culture and climate as a way to
improve the effectiveness of safety and health programs and practices.

• Intermediate Goal 8.1: Create a working definition and framework for construction
industry safety and health culture and improve understanding of the factors that contribute
to a positive or negative safety and health culture in the construction industry.
• Intermediate Goal 8.2: Develop and expand the use of validated measurement methods
for evaluating safety culture and safety climate in the construction industry.
• Intermediate Goal 8.3: Partner with construction stakeholders to develop and
disseminate effective intervention measures for improving safety and health culture in
the construction industry.

The committee designed the workshop so that the session-specific activities would at least begin to
address each of the intermediate goals. For continuity, this final chapter is divided into the three
sections mirroring the goals and workshop sessions: Definitions, Measurement, and Interventions.

DEFINING SAFETY CULTURE, SAFETY CLIMATE,

SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
The workshop provided an excellent vehicle for researchers and practitioners to share their
understanding of what safety climate and safety culture mean vis-à-vis the construction industry.
While there was broad agreement that both concepts add value to industry efforts to reduce the
toll of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities, participants’ definitional preferences were spread over
several of the candidate definitions provided. Still, it was clear from workshop discussions that
participants thought it would be useful to have a set of construction specific working definitions
for both safety culture and safety climate. The planning committee agrees, and indeed believes it
is necessary if we want to obtain a better understanding of the underlying factors (i.e., leading
indicators) that together create a positive (or negative) safety climate at the worksite. Therefore,
as noted in Chapter 1, we propose the following working definitions that we believe can help us
move forward:
(Organizational) Safety Culture: Deeply held but often unspoken safety-related beliefs,
attitudes, and values that interact with an organization’s systems, practices, people, and leadership
to establish norms about how things are done in the organization. Safety culture is a subset of,
and clearly influenced by, organizational culture. Organizations often have multiple cultures or
subcultures, and this may be particularly true in construction.
(Organizational) Safety Climate: The shared perceptions of safety policies and procedures by
members of an organization at a given point in time, particularly regarding the adequacy of safety
and consistency between actual conditions and espoused safety policies and procedures. Homoge-

34
neous subgroups tend to develop shared perceptions while between-group differences are not
uncommon within an organization.
Project Safety Climate: Perceptions of occupational safety and health on a particular con-
struction project at a given point in time. It is a product of the multiple safety climates from the
different organizations involved in the project including the project owner, construction manager/
general contractor, and subcontractors. Project safety climate may be heavily influenced by local
conditions such as project delivery method, schedule and planning, and incentives.
Because construction is conducted on a project by project basis, we believe the project
safety climate definition is particularly important due to the influence of project owners, general
contractors, subcontractor relationships, and overall project conditions (e.g., project delivery,
joint ventures, schedule and incentives). As mentioned in Chapter 2, it may be more difficult to
align the deeply held, and sometimes competing, values and norms (i.e., safety culture) of the
multiple employers and trades that come together to work on a particular jobsite.
It is clear from the data reviewed that the term safety culture is more widely recognized,
however it is often inaccurately used as a catchall term. This is particularly true when people talk
about safety culture surveys or measurements. Perception surveys are typically designed to
measure safety climate rather than safety culture. Survey results, however, may reflect to some
degree the underlying safety culture. Without definitional agreement, reliable and valid measure-
ment won’t be possible and organizations won’t have the data they need to understand their own
safety climate and how best to improve it.

MEASURING CULTURE AND SAFETY CLIMATE

The workshop devoted significant time to the topic of safety climate (vs. culture) assessment.
Workshop participants unanimously acknowledged that the industry remains much too dependent
on lagging indicators (e.g., injury and illness rates) to measure the effectiveness of worksite safety
activities. Addressing safety should not be reactive or backward looking; rather our approach must
be proactive and anticipatory. Whether we use surveys, rubrics, focus groups, or less formal
discussions, organizations and project managers need to understand members’ perceptions of the
effectiveness of safety efforts and obtain ideas for how to improve them.
The goal of more general safety climate assessments is to understand how safety climate is
perceived at the organization or project level and to compare perceptions across different groups
(e.g., frontline workers vs. supervisors vs. top managers). This is often referred to as a “gaps
analysis.” Even employers with strong safety programs may be surprised by the gap in safety
climate perceptions between managers and frontline workers. This type of evaluation can be
repeated at some specified interval to examine changes over time, but the results won’t necessarily
answer the question why things have changed.
Reliable and valid targeted assessments are needed to answer the questions “What are the
specific leading indicators (factors) of safety climate that need to be improved and how will I know
if the change I implement actually leads to improvement?” Workshop participants identified a
number of safety climate leading indicators that could be measured and ultimately targeted for
interventions. For example, if supervisory safety-related communication skills were identified by a
general assessment as being inadequate, the organization would design and implement a program
to train supervisors to communicate more competently and consistently about various aspects of
safety. Baseline data using a targeted survey that asks questions about their supervisor’s communi-
cation skills (e.g., Does your supervisor: provide a consistent message about safety; transmit that
safety is valued as much as production; get input from you about problems and solutions?) would
be collected from workers before intervention implementation. A follow-up evaluation using that

35
same targeted survey would be conducted with those same workers to determine how effective the
program was at improving the supervisor’s safety-related communication skills. Another example
would be a general assessment showing that workers perceive that safety is a priority until there is
a schedule crunch. A targeted survey including questions about this could be administered at
baseline. A new planning process or a strategy for supervisors to buffer their crews from schedule
pressures are interventions that might address this problem, and the survey could be re-adminis-
tered to assess the effectiveness of the new process.
Safety and health professionals or others responsible for improving safety climate may wish
to use outside academics/researchers or consultants to assist in developing or conducting the
evaluation approach that will work best for their organization. Outside assessment may be more
trusted by workers and thus get a more accurate response. It is often the case, however, that not
enough time or money is allocated for intervention evaluation. Thus, we want to strongly encour-
age safety and health practitioners and construction company owners to devote adequate resourc-
es to conducting well designed evaluations of their intervention efforts. Evaluation findings can
benefit both the company and the industry as a whole.
The committee believes that additional research is needed to develop a common set of
items to measure a common set of leading indicators/factors that comprise safety climate. Evalua-
tions also need to be designed to take into account variations in work unit and supervisor charac-
teristics when analyzing and interpreting safety climate data, particularly the level at which data
should be aggregated.

INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE SAFETY CLIMATE FACTORS

(LEADING INDICATORS)
Each workgroup identified a number of promising interventions that could be used to improve
safety climate factors. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time during the workshop to explore
each idea in depth or to compare and prioritize them for use in construction. Therefore, after the
workshop the meeting’s organizers reviewed the results of the workgroup discussions, the peer-
reviewed scholarly and trade literatures, interviews with stakeholders, and used our collective
experience to more fully develop some of the more promising intervention ideas that could be
used to address each of the critical factors identified during the workshop. We present these
below. As with all safety and health recommendations, interventions are most effective when
tailored to specific employer and worksite circumstances. Also, as mentioned above, it is impor-
tant to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions to determine the degree to which they resolved
the identified safety climate issue.

A. Improve site safety leadership

Front-line supervisors are the linchpin of any safety program and how they lead and communicate
are among the most important factors in determining safety climate on the jobsite. These indi-
viduals have the power to make changes and get hazards corrected before anyone gets hurt.
Interventions to improve safety climate via supervisory leadership include additional emphasis on
selecting and rewarding supervisors based on their safety performance (not just on productivity
and quality measures), and ensuring that supervisors receive the proper safety training, not just on
hazards but on the leadership and communication skills needed to create a positive safety climate
on the jobsite. A supervisor’s ability to incorporate these types of skills on the jobsite can be
evaluated by asking workers directly and by observational methods.
Other levels of project leadership can also take greater ownership of safety. Large compa-
nies typically employ and then rely on a safety professional for most safety-related activity.

36
However, companies large or small with exemplary safety cultures and climates tend to distribute
safety responsibilities across project superintendents and other field leadership. Safety profession-
als can still serve as a resource to the field personnel but should not be perceived as the only
person who can “fix” safety problems. Moving to this model requires that foremen and other site
leaders receive quality safety and leadership training, mentoring, and feedback. Organizations that
implement this approach are likely to see improved integration of safety with planning and
production as well as having more responsible, proactive, and safer field leadership.

B. Align and integrate safety as a value

When safety is aligned and integrated throughout an organization it is seen by
organizational members as being a core company value rather than an additional Interventions are
burden or diversion from “normal” operations. Strong safety and health policies most effective when
and procedures are an important foundation, but unless they are actually tailored to specific
implemented and integrated throughout the organization, meaningful and employer and worksite
measurable safety improvement may be elusive. circumstances.
Suggested interventions for moving towards this goal include gaining a
better understanding of how safety is implemented within the various areas and
functions of an organization including engineering and design, communication,
planning, quality control, human resources, and subcontractor management. Safety
should be integrated into all reward and recognition programs for workers, front line supervisors,
and also top managers. Integrating safety into processes such as schedule and production meet-
ings can help management appreciate that it is a regular and necessary part of the process with
benefits beyond safety.
Interventions to improve alignment might involve building relationships between various
departments and groups and finding opportunities to improve “fit” among competing activities. A
good practice would be to integrate safety into the design and planning phases of a construction
project by performing “safety design reviews” and “constructability safety reviews”. Encouraging
discussions between planners/designers and construction workers builds relationships, and these
new communication channels can lead to improved safety culture and climate. Breaking down
traditional barriers can help alleviate problems that workers often experience on jobsites, like one
trade having to work around or under another because the work was not scheduled or sequenced
properly. Materials may not be delivered where and when they are needed creating logistical
bottlenecks and posing manual handling risks. These experiences may be so frequent as to seem
normal (e.g., “that’s construction”), but they should not and need not be the norm. Production
planning that incorporates safety concerns reduces the need to compensate and cut corners when
time pressures increase.

C. Optimize management commitment

Management commitment is the “motherhood and apple pie” of safety culture and safety climate, but
defining it, demonstrating it, and measuring it are essential for moving culture and climate in a positive
direction. At its most basic level actions like providing the proper personal protective equipment,
including safety as a top agenda item at all meetings, or requiring that all workers are OSHA-10
trained reflect management’s commitment to worker safety. Similarly providing an adequate budget to
ensure worker safety and health is a critical indicator of management commitment.
Specific interventions to engage top management will likely depend on the size and
structure of the firm. To move forward on achieving zero injuries, companies should gather data
on leading indicators using job hazard analysis audits or other tools to help predict and prevent

37
 exposures and adverse safety outcomes before they happen. Companies can begin doing this on
their own using simple forms and Excel spreadsheets or they can hire outside consultant firms. 
Some contractors facilitate regular interaction among corporate managers, project manage-
ment, and craft workers by requiring that managers conduct frequent site walkthroughs and have
safety-related conversations with workers on-site. Others establish open communication pathways
so that every time there is a safety-related incident a report is funneled from the worksite through
project managers to top executives, and the steps taken to address the incident are reported back
down to project managers and workers. Contractor leadership should give safety and productivity
messages equal status at site orientations and other regularly held meetings. Rather than lofty
statements like “Safety is our number 1 priority,” specifics like the expectation that employees are
empowered to stop work when they see a hazard or if they feel uncomfortable continuing to
work in a particular situation should be made clear. Alternative pathways need to be
created for employees to report safety-related issues if they are not resolved through
the supervisor.
Use safety
Safety “stand-downs” are becoming more common on construction projects
stand-downs to
but typically conducted only after a serious injury or mishap occurs. Contractors
proactively address safety might consider using them more proactively to address safety topics of concern and
topics of concern and relevance to front-line employees or supervisors. Such periodic stand-downs would
relevance. send strong positive prevention messages, and structuring them to maximize worker
participation would demonstrate that management believes that safety is a participa-
tory activity and that workers play a critical role.

D. Empower and involve workers

Underlying the various factors of safety climate is the need for mutual trust between workers and
management about safety. Workers need to trust that management will create a safe worksite and
not penalize those who raise safety concerns. Management can demonstrate their level of trust by
involving and empowering workers in worksite safety and health and even sharing power and
responsibility (e.g., joint safety committees). Actively listening to workers’ suggestions and quickly
responding to their concerns further engenders trust.
Setting the expectation and explicitly giving workers the authority to stop work if they have
a safety concern empowers workers to become proactively involved in their own and their
co-workers’ safety. It is critical that when there is a safety situation, management takes the
employee’s concern seriously and acts accordingly. If they don’t, or if there is any reprisal, workers
will quickly lose trust in the system and stop reporting. Fear of speaking up, fear of reporting, and
fear of retaliation are conditions that work against a trusting, just, learning, and safe climate.
Rewarding workers for reporting injuries, hazards, and close calls demonstrates that safety is a
priority and not just words written on paper.
Involving workers in pre-task planning and job hazard analyses (JHA) are excellent proce-
dures for empowering workers and both have the added benefit of being proactive and preventive
safety activities. When these activities are included as a regular part of craft workers’ jobs, the
message is reinforced that safety is an inherent part of every procedure, not an add-on.

E. Ensure accountability
Everyone involved in a construction project should be held accountable for safety: owners,
management, safety personnel, supervisors, and workers. Supervisors’ performance evaluations
should reflect the safety-related leadership skills discussed above, as well as safety outcome
performance. Conducting a root-cause analysis after an incident is critical for ensuring blame-free
accountability. High reliability organizations (HROs) use incidents and near misses as opportuni-

38
ties for learning and prevention. Most incidents are combinations of environmental, organiza-
tional, and human factors. Nothing will hamper the development of a positive safety climate and
the free flow of information more than an investigation process that seeks to blame rather than
learn. Cursory investigations can be counterproductive to achieving a positive safety climate if
they focus on blaming front line worker behaviors and do not sufficiently consider organizational
contributions. “Human errors” are in fact often provoked by “latent conditions” such as time
pressure, understaffing, inadequate equipment, fatigue, inexperience, unworkable procedures, or
unanticipated conditions (Reason 2000).
A variety of simple interventions can be considered to improve incident investigations and
to minimize negative impacts on safety climate. For example, the safety and health program’s
investigation forms should include the appropriate boxes to consider all relevant system safety as
well as latent conditions, and those boxes should be listed on the forms prior to human error
factors to ensure they get due consideration. Front line supervisors should be trained to conduct
blame-free incident investigations and mechanisms must be put in place for sharing findings
across the whole organization. Finally, there need to be accountability mechanisms for following
through on findings including specifics on how system and latent conditions will be addressed.

F. Improve communication
Communication is an important aspect of all the safety climate factors. Both words and actions
communicate safety-relevant messages and it’s not just what is said but also how it is said. This
section, therefore, addresses both enhancing overt two-way communication about safety and
increasing awareness about implicit messaging that the organization or project may be sending.
Structures should be created that ensure two-way communication. One example is to estab-
lish a joint safety and health committee where employee and employer representatives problem-
solve safety issues. Tailgate or other pre-shift crew meetings provide a venue where more local-
ized issues can be raised and addressed. Beyond formal structures and meetings, research
demonstrates that having supervisors actively initiate safety discussions with their employees is a
simple but important communication mechanism for improving safety climate.
It is also important to look beyond the direct communication of safety information to
examine other channels where conflicting messages may be sent and received. Safety discipline
policies, injury reporting and investigation procedures, and site orientations are all examples of
safety program elements that could benefit from a review for mixed messages. For example, if the
overriding message from a project superintendent is that the project is behind schedule and crews
need to pick up the pace, any mention of safety practices might be seen by workers as just lip
service. Another form of implicit messaging may be via the project’s reward structure. If the overt
message is that all injuries should be reported but worker and supervisor rewards and incentives
are based on achieving zero accidents, an unintended consequence may be under- or non-report-
ing. On the other hand, a hazard-reporting based incentive program communicates to all involved
that prevention and increased information flow are rewarded.

G. Train to improve safety climate

The issue of training has been mentioned in many of the prior sections and therefore training
interventions to improve safety climate will only be discussed briefly here. Providing supervisors
with safety, communication, and leadership skills training is critical for improving worksite safety
climate. Some construction companies have policies that require OSHA 30-hour training for
supervisors and managers, and some go beyond this by requiring them to become certified as
“Safety-trained Supervisors”. Safety training for employees in departments such as planning and

39
design and for senior managers provides important opportunities to align and integrate safety into
the organization and thus improve safety climate. Some design-build firms provided “Prevention
through Design” (PtD) training for in-house architects and engineers.
Most construction companies require orientation safety training as a pre-condition for craft
workers to begin working on the jobsite. The content of the training should be reviewed to
ensure it contains clear positive safety messages and includes expectations of how safety will be
handled and supported on the site.

H. Encourage owner/client involvement

Owners can drive project safety performance for better or for worse. Partly it’s what they are
willing to pay for, but more specifically it includes what they value in bid decisions, how they
reward and track project progress after bids are let, and what they demand of contractors and
workers. One idea is to have owners participate in Owner Controlled Insurance Programs
(OCIPs).  An OCIP is a self-insurance program where owners pay out of pocket for health care
and lost time costs, which gives them a financial stake in maintaining safety on their sites. So,
rather than each contractor and sub purchasing insurance (including Workers’ Comp) separately
and charging the owner for those costs, an OCIP involves the owner purchasing the insurance for
all parties on the site. Thus, the owner will save money if the job is done safely but will incur costs
if not. Another idea is for owners to have a safety representative involved in all project audits.
Owners can also be encouraged to integrate safety into the front end of the construction
delivery process by using Prevention through Design (PtD) approaches during design reviews,
ensuring that safety is a substantive part of sub-contractor pre-qualification, mandating safety
specifications, holding pre-job safety planning meetings, and establishing project-wide safety-
related metrics of both leading and lagging indicators with accountability.
A final suggestion for facilitating increased owner involvement in safety is to develop
incentives that encourage them to adopt a range of best practices, similar to how owners have
embraced “green construction”. An example of this strategy is the Australian government’s
“Model Client: Promoting Safe Construction” program intended to ensure that federal construc-
tion is performed using best practices, including PtD and safety pre-qualifications. Interested
owners and other stakeholders can access The Model Client materials at: http://www.fsc.gov.au/
sites/fsc/engageaccredited/modelclient/pages/modelclient )

40
Conclusions
Some say that safety culture and safety climate represent “just how we do business.” This work-
shop began the process of changing “how business is done” by creating a vibrant dialogue among
practitioners and researchers, industry professionals, and union representatives about what these
concepts are, how they should be measured, and ideas for how they can be improved. This was a
good start. What’s next? We hope this report will provide the impetus to continue this dialogue.
We need a safe space for workers and employers to come together to openly address these core
safety-related issues. We also must focus on implementing and evaluating interventions to test
their effectiveness, while acknowledging that more research on how to measure and improve
safety climate in construction is needed, including a continuing effort to use common indicators
and measures across projects. Publicizing such evaluations and lessons learned will help move the
industry in the right direction.
We also understand that different segments of the construction industry are at different
stages and have varying needs regarding safety culture and climate improvement. This is not to
say that workers at the smallest residential firm don’t deserve the same protection from injury,
illness, and death as workers on large commercial or civil projects. However, contracting compa-
nies of different sizes and in different sectors (e.g., residential vs. commercial) will need to work
with their employees to adapt the various intervention ideas to their circumstances.
While the workshop fostered a valuable exchange of views and ideas to help promote a
broader understanding of the current needs and opportunities and helped identify a number of
tangible actions that construction industry stakeholders can take to improve safety culture/climate
and performance, more research is needed on how to measure and improve both safety climate
and safety culture in construction. To do this effectively, the dialogue that began at the workshop
needs to continue.

41
Reference List
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the roles of person and situation factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1103–1127.

Dekker S. 2006. The field guide to understanding human error. Aldershot UK: Ashgate.

Gittleman J, Gardner PC, Haile E, Sampson, JM, Cigularov, KP, Ermann, ED, Stafford P.,
Chen PY. 2010. CityCenter and Cosmopolitan Construction Projects, Las Vegas, Nevada:
lessons learned from the use of multiple sources and mixed methods in a safety needs assessment.
Journal of Safety Research 41: 263–1.

Goldenhar LM, Brady PW, Sutcliffe KM, Meuthing, S. 2013. Huddling for high reliability and
situation awareness. BMJ Quality & Safety; 22: 899–906.

Healy N, Sugden C. 2012. Safety culture on the Olympic Park. London: HSE Books, Research
report 942.

Institute for Work and Health 2011. Benchmarking organizational leading indicators for the
prevention and management of injuries and illnesses. Toronto: Institute for Work and Health.

Johnson SE. 2007. The predictive validity of safety climate. Journal of Safety Research 38: 511–521.

Kohn LT, Corrigan J, Donaldson MS. 2000. To err is human: building a safer health system.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Lingard H, Cooke T, Blismas N. 2009. Group-level safety climate in the Australian construction
industry: within-group homogeneity and between-group differences in road construction and
maintenance. Construction Management and Economics 27: 419–432.

Nahrgang JD, Morgeson FP, Hofmann DA. 2010. Safety at Work: A Meta-Analytic Investigation
of the Link Between Job Demands, Job Resources, Burnout, Engagement, and Safety Outcomes.
Journal of Applied Psychology 95:1-24.

Parker D, Lawrie M, Hudson PA. 2006. Framework for understanding the development of
organisational safety culture. Safety Science, 44, 551 – 562.

Reason J. 1997. Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Aldershot UK: Ashgate.

Reason J. 2000. Human Error: models and management. British Medical Journal.
Volume 320:768-770.

Seo DC, Torabi MR, Blair EH, Ellis NT. 2004. A cross-validation of safety climate scale using
confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Safety Research 35(4): 427-445.

Törner M, Pousette A. 2009. Safety in construction: a comprehensive description of the

characteristics of high safety standards in construction work, from the combined perspective of
supervisors and experienced workers. Journal of Safety Research 40(6): 399-409.

Weick K, Sutcliffe K. 2007. Managing the unexpected: Resilient performance in an age of

uncertainty. 2nd edn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Zohar, D. 2010. Thirty years of safety climate research: Reflections and future directions.
Accident Analysis and Prevention, 42:1517-1522.

42
Appendix 1
CONSTRUCTION TRACK AGENDA

June 11

11:00 am -noon Safety Culture and Climate: Defining and Framing the issues for the Construction
Industry
Presentations and multi-voting
MODERATOR: Matt Gillen

Noon – 1:00 Lunch

1:15 – 3:00 Leading Indicators: Key factors that contribute to Safety Climate
Presentations and small group discussions
MODERATOR: Matt Gillen

3:00 – 3:15 Break

3:15 – 5:00 Assessing Safety Climate

Presentations and small group discussions
MODERATOR: Linda Goldenhar

5:00 pm Adjourn for the day

June 12

8:30 – 10:15 am Interventions for Improving Safety Climate

Presentations and small group discussions
MODERATOR: Scott Schneider

10:15 – 10:45 Break

10:45 – 11:45 Needs and Next Steps for Bridging the Gap and Moving Forward
• Collaboration
• R2P2R
• Dissemination across a segmented industry
MODERATOR: Steven Hecker

11:45 Evaluation of construction track

Adjourn

Construction track workshop planning committee: Matt Gillen, CIH, Associate Director of
the NIOSH Office of Construction Safety and Health; Dr. Linda Goldenhar, Director, Research
and Evaluation, CPWR - The Center for Construction Research and Training; Steve Hecker,
Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Oregon; Scott Schneider, CIH, Director of
Occupational Safety and Health, Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America;
Dr. Alberto Caban-Martinez, DO, PhD, MPH, CPH, Research Associate and Chief Research
Fellow, Harvard University, School of Public Health

43
Appendix 2
The rubric below appeared in the journal Safety Science in the 2006 article, “A framework for
understanding the development of organisational safety culture,” by Dianne Parker and Matthew
Lawrie of the University of Manchester, UK, and Patrick Hudson of Leiden University, The
Netherlands. Permission to use this table has been granted by the lead author, Dianne Parker,
and by the publisher, Elsevier. See * at the end of Appendix 2 for more information.

*DYSFUNCTIONAL REACTIVE *COMPLIANT PROACTIVE *EXEMPLARY

Benchmarking, Trends and Statistics
Compliance with Try to respond as other Benchmark on incidents Benchmark against Benchmark outside the
statutory HSE reporting companies do, and and accidents. Display others in same industry, industry, using both
requirements, but little worry about the cost of lots of data publicly driven by management. ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
more. Benchmarking accidents, and their throughout the Try to be the best in the measures. Involve all
only on finance and placing in the ‘safety organization. Focus on industry. Look for levels of the
production. league’. Statistics report current problems that trends, understand organization in
the immediate causes can be measured them and use them to identifying action
of accidents. objectively and adapt strategy. Explain points for improvement.
summarized findings to supervisors.
numerically.
Audits and Reviews
Unwilling compliance Accept being audited as There is a regular, Extensive audit Full audit system
with statutory inescapable, especially scheduled audit program including running smoothly with
inspection after serious or fatal program. It cross-auditing within good follow up.
requirements. Audits accidents. No schedule concentrates on known the organization. Continuous informal
are mainly financial. for audits and reviews, high hazard areas. Management and search for non-obvious
HSE audits are as they are seen as a Happy to audit others, supervisors realize that problems with outside
unstructured, and only punishment. but being audited is less they are biased and help when needed.
after major accidents. welcome. Audits are welcome outside help. There are fewer audits
structured in terms of Audits are seen as of hardware and
management systems. positive, if painful. systems, and more at
the level of behaviors.
Incident/accident reporting, investigation and analysis
Many incidents are not There is an informal There are procedures There are trained Investigation and
reported. Investigation reporting system and producing lots of data investigators, with analysis driven by a
only takes place after a investigation is aimed and action items, but systematic follow-up to deep understanding of
serious accident. only at immediate opportunities to check that change has how accidents happen.
Analyses don’t consider causes, with a paper address the real issues occurred and been Real issues identified by
human factors or go trail to show an are often missed. The maintained. Reports are aggregating
beyond legal investigation has taken search for causes is sent companywide to information from a wide
requirements. Protect place. Investigation usually restricted to the share information and range of incidents.
the company and its focuses on finding level of the local lessons learned. There is Follow up is systematic,
profits. guilty parties. There is workforce. little creativity in to check that change
little systematic follow imagining how the real occurs and is
up and previous similar underlying issues could maintained.
events are not affect the business.
considered.
Hazard and Unsafe Act reports
There are no reports. Reporting is simple and Reports follow a fixed Reporting looks for All levels actively access
factual. Focus is on format for ‘why’ rather than just and use the information
determining who or categorization and ‘what’ or ‘when’. Quick generated by reports in
what caused the documentation of submission of reports is their daily work.
situation. The company observations. Number appreciated, and blanks
does not track actions of reports is what in forms can be filled in
after reports. counts. The company later. Management sets
requires complete reporting goals.
forms without blanks.

44
*DYSFUNCTIONAL REACTIVE *COMPLIANT PROACTIVE *EXEMPLARY
Work planning including PTW, Journey Management
There is no HSE HSE planning is based There is a lot of Planning is standard There is a polished
planning and little on what went wrong in emphasis on hazard practice, with work and planning process with
planning overall. What the past. There is an analysis and Permit To HSE integrated in the both anticipation of
work planning there is informal general Work. There is little use plan. Plans are followed problems and review of
concentrates on the planning process, based of feedback to improve through and there is the process. Employees
quickest, fastest, and primarily on managing planning, but people some evaluation of are trusted to do most
cheapest execution. the time taken for a job. believe that the system effectiveness by planning. There is less
is good and will prevent supervisors and line paper, more thinking,
accidents. management. and the process is well
known and
disseminated.
Contractor management
Get the job done with The company only pays Contractors meet HSE issues are seen as No compromises to
minimum effort and attention to HSE issues extensive pre- partnership. Pre- work quality. Find
expense. in contracting qualification qualification is on the solutions together with
companies after an requirements based on basis of proof that there contractors to achieve
accident. The primary questionnaires and is a working HSE- expectations even if this
selection criterion is statistics. HSE standards management system. means postponing the
price, but only poor are lowered if no Joint company- job until requirements
safety performance has contractor meets contractor safety efforts are met.
consequences for requirements. are observed and the
choice of contractors. Contractors have to get company helps with
up to speed on their contractor training.
own.
Competency/training – are workers interested?
Training is seen as a Training is aimed at the Competence matrices Leadership fully Issues like attitudes
necessary evil. Attend person - “If we can are present and lots of acknowledges the become as important as
training when it is changes their attitude standard training importance of tested knowledge and skills.
compulsory by law. everything will be all courses are given. skills on the job. The Development is seen as
Workers don’t mind right”. After an accident Acquired course workforce is proud to a process rather than an
exchanging a harsh money is made knowledge is tested. demonstrate their skills event. Needs are
working environment available for specific There is some in on-the-job identified and methods
for a couple of hours training programs. The on-the-job transfer of assessment. Training of acquiring skills are
training off the job. training effort training. needs start to be proposed by the
diminishes over time. identified by the workforce, who are an
workforce. integral part of the
process rather than just
passive receivers.
Work-site job safety techniques
There are no techniques After accidents a A commercially Job safety analysis/job Job safety analysis, as a
applied. Look out for standard work-site available technique is safety observation work-site hazard
yourself. hazard management introduced to meet the techniques are management
technique is bought in, requirements of the accepted by the technique, is revised
but there is little management system, workforce as being in regularly in a defined
systematic use after but leads to little action. their own interest and process. People (both
initial introduction. Quotas are used to they regard such workers and
demonstrate that the methods as standard supervisors) are not
system is working. practice. afraid to tell each other
Nothing else is used. about hazards.

(continued on next page)

45
*DYSFUNCTIONAL REACTIVE *COMPLIANT PROACTIVE *EXEMPLARY
Who checks safety on a day-to-day basis?
There is no formal External inspectors Site activities are Supervisors encourage Everyone checks for
system ,so individuals check sites after major regularly checked by work teams to check hazards, looking out for
take care of themselves incidents. Cursory site the line management, safety for themselves. themselves and their
as they see fit. checks are performed but not on a daily basis. Managers doing work-mates. Supervisor
by line supervision/ Inspections aim at walk-rounds are seen as inspections are largely
management when compliance with sincere. They engage unnecessary. There is no
they are visiting, mostly procedures. employees in dialogue. problem with
after incidents or Internal cross-audits demanding shutdowns
inefficiencies. There is take place, involving of operations.
no formal system for managers and
follow up. supervisors.
What is the size/status of the HSE department?
If there is a department, The department is small HSE positions are given HSE seen as an There may not be an
it consists of one person and has little power. It is to middle managers important job, given to HSE department
or a small staff in the HR seen as a career with good backgrounds high fliers. HSE because it is not
department. backwater, and once in who can’t be placed professionals are needed, as the safety
it is hard to get out. The elsewhere. It is a large recruited directly and culture is right. HSE
staff is on call department with some advisors are responsibilities are
constantly, but usually status and power, appreciated by the line. distributed throughout
very much in the mainly performing All senior people in the company. If there is
background. The number crunching and operations must have a department it is small
department is seen as a sending people on HSE experience. The but powerful, having
police force. training courses. The HSE manager reports equal status with other
HSE manager reports to directly to the top departments.
someone in a position management of the
of operational authority. company.
What are the rewards of good safety performance?
None is given or There are disincentives Some lip service is paid There are some rewards Recognition itself seen
expected – staying alive for poor HSE to good safety and good performance as high value. Good HSE
is reward enough. There performance. The performance. Safety is considered in performance is
are only punishments understanding that awards such as T- shirts promotion reviews. intrinsically motivating.
for failure. positive behavior can or baseball hats are Evaluation is process-
be rewarded has not yet made. There are safety based rather than on
arrived. Managers’ competitions and outcomes.
bonuses tied to LTI quizzes. TRCF is used
performance. when calculating
bonuses.
Who causes accidents in the eyes of management?
Individuals are blamed, There are attempts to Faulty machinery and Management looks at Blame is not an issue.
and it is believed that remove ‘accident-prone’ poor maintenance are the whole system, Management accepts it
accidents are a part of individuals. It is identified as causes as including processes and could be responsible
the job. Responsibility believed that accidents well as people. There procedures when when assessing what
for accidents is seen as are often just bad luck. are attempts to reduce considering accident they personally could
belonging to those The responsibility of exposure. Management causes. They admit that have done to remove
directly involved. The System for has a Them, rather than management must take root causes. They take a
accidents is considered Us, mentality and takes some of the blame. broad view looking at
but has no an individual rather the interaction of
consequences. than a systems systems and people.
perspective.
What happens after an accident? Is the feedback loop being closed?
After an accident the Line management is Workforce reports their Management is Top management is
focus is on the annoyed by ‘stupid’ own accidents but disappointed, but asks seen amongst the
employee, and they are accidents. After an maintain distance with about the well-being of people involved directly
often fired. The priority accident reports are not contractor incidents. those involved. after an accident. They
is to limit damage and passed up the line if it Management goes Investigation focuses on show personal interest
get back to production. can be avoided. ballistic when they hear underlying causes and in individuals and the
Warning letters sent by of an accident – “What the results are fed back investigation process.
management. does this do to our to the supervisory level. Employees take
statistics?” accidents to others
personally.

46
*DYSFUNCTIONAL REACTIVE *COMPLIANT PROACTIVE *EXEMPLARY
How do safety meetings feel?
Meetings, if any, are Meetings are attended Meetings are like Meetings feel like a Meetings can be called
seen as a waste of time. reluctantly. They textbook discussions genuine forum for by any employee,
They are run by the provide opportunities about company policy interaction across the taking place in a relaxed
boss or a supervisor, to point the finger of with limited interaction. company. At lower atmosphere, and may
and are felt to be a case blame for incidents, and The regular scheduled levels all meetings are be run by employees
of going through the form a standard meetings feel like safety meetings and are with managers
motions. Conversation response to an accident. overkill. Toolbox used to identify attending by invitation.
often turns to sport. Toolbox meetings may meetings are run on a problems before they Toolbox meetings are
be dominated by strict agenda. occur. short and focused on
non-work issues. ensuring everyone is
aware of what problems
might arise.
Balance between HSE and profitability
Profitability is the only Cost is important, but Safety and profitability The company tries to There are in balance, so
concern. Safety is seen there is some are juggled rather than make HSE the top that this becomes a
as costing money, and investment in balanced, with the line priority, while non-issue. Management
the only priority is to preventative spending most of its understanding that HSE believes that HSE makes
avoid extra costs. maintenance. time on operational contributes to financial money. The company
Operational factors issues. Line managers return. The company is accepts delays to get
dominate. know how to say the quite good at juggling contractors up to
right things, but do not the two, and accepts standard in terms of
always walk their own delays to get safety.
talk. Safety is seen as contractors up to
discretionary standard in terms of
expenditure. If all safety. Money still
contractors are counts.
unacceptable, the least
bad is taken.
Is management interested in communicating HSE issues with the workforce?
Management is not The ‘flavor of the month’ Management shares a Managers realize that There is a definite
interested apart from safety message is lot of information with dialogue with the two-way process in
telling workers not to passed down from workers and has workforce is desirable which management
cause problems. management. Any frequent safety and so a two-way gets more information
interest diminishes over initiatives. Management process is in place. back than they provide.
time as things get ‘back does a lot of talking but Asking as well as telling The process is
to normal’. there are few goes on. The emphasis transparent. It’s seen as
opportunities for is on looking out for a family tragedy if
bottom-up each other in the someone gets hurt.
communication. workplace.
Commitment level of workforce and level of care for colleagues
“Who cares as long as ‘Look out for yourself’ is There is a trickle down Pride is beginning to Levels of commitment
we don’t get caught?” still the rule. There is a of management’s develop, increasing the and care are very high
Individuals look after voiced commitment to increasing awareness of workforce’s and are driven by
themselves care for colleagues, the costs of failure. commitment to HSE employees who show
after accidents, by both People know how to and their care for passion about living up
management and pay lip service to safety, colleagues, but the to their aspirations.
workforce, but this but practical factors feeling is not universal. Standards are defined
diminishes after a may prevent complete by the workforce.
period of good safety follow through.
performance.

(continued on next page)

47
 *DYSFUNCTIONAL REACTIVE *COMPLIANT PROACTIVE *EXEMPLARY
What is the purpose of procedures?
The company makes The purpose of HSE There are many HSE HSE procedures spread There is trust in
HSE procedures out of procedures is to prevent procedures, serving as best practice but are employees that they
necessity. They are seen individual incidents ‘barriers’ to prevent seen as occasionally can recognize situations
as limiting peoples’ recurring. They are incidents. It is hard to inconvenient by a where compliance
activities to avoid often written in separate procedures competent workforce. A should be challenged.
litigation or harm to response to accidents from training. limited degree of Non-compliance to HSE
assets. and their overall effect non-compliance is procedures goes
may not be properly acceptable. through recognized
considered in detail. channels. Procedures
are refined for
efficiency.

*Adapted rubric: The authors replaced three of the original Parker headings for use at the
Workshop. Pathological was replaced with Dysfunctional, Calculative was replaced with
Compliant, and Generative was replaced with Exemplary.

Appendix 3
OSHA I2P2 Tool for a Safety and Health Program Assessment*

I. MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Clear worksite safety and health policy
There is no policy. There is a written (or There is a S&H policy There is a S&H policy There is a S&H policy and all
oral, where and some employees and majority of employees accept, can
appropriate) policy. can explain it. employees can explain explain, and fully
it. understand it.
Clear goals and objectives are set and communicated
There are no safety There are written (or Some employees can Majority of employees All employees are involved
and health goals and oral, where explain results and can explain results and in developing goals and can
objectives. appropriate) goals and measures for achieving measures for achieving explain desired results and
objectives. them. them. how results are measured.
Management Leadership
Safety and health is There is some Some employees can Majority of employees All employees can give
not a top evidence that top give examples of can give examples of examples of management’s
management value or management is management’s management’s active commitment to safety and
concern. committed to safety commitment to safety commitment to safety health.
and health. and health. and health.
Management example
Management does not Management Management follows Management follows All employees recognize
follow basic safety and generally follows basic the rules and the rules and usually that management always
health rules. safety and health rules. occasionally addresses addresses the safety follows the rules and
the safety behavior of behavior of others. addresses the safety
others. behavior of others

48
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Employee involvement
Employee involvement Employees generally Some employees feel Majority of employees All employees have
in safety and health feel that their safety that they have a feel they have a ownership of safety and
issues is not and health input will positive impact on positive impact on health and can explain their
encouraged nor be considered by safety and health. identifying and roles.
rewarded. supervisors. resolving safety and
health issues.
Assigned safety and health responsibilities
Specific job Performance Some employees can Majority of employees All employees can explain
responsibilities and expectations are explain what can explain what what performance is
performance generally spelled out performance is performance is expected of them.
expectations are for all employees. expected of them. expected of them.
generally unknown or
hard to find.
Authority and resources for safety and health
All authority and Authority and Authority and Majority of employees All employees believe they
resources come from resources exist, but resources are spelled believe they have the have the necessary authority
supervision and are most are controlled by out for all, but there is necessary authority and resources to meet their
not delegated. supervisors. often a reluctance to and resources to meet responsibilities.
use them. their responsibilities.
Accountability
There is no effort There is some Personnel are Accountability systems Personnel are held
towards accountability, but it is generally held are in place, but accountable and all
accountability. generally hit or miss. accountable, but consequences used performance is addressed
consequences and tend to be for negative with appropriate
rewards do not always performance only. consequences.
follow performance.
Program Review (Quality Assurance)
There is no program Changes in programs A program review is A comprehensive In addition to a
review process. are driven by events conducted, but it review is conducted at comprehensive review, a
such as accidents or doesn’t drive all least annually and process is used which drives
near misses. necessary program drives appropriate continuous correction.
changes. program
modifications.

II. WORKSITE ANALYSIS

Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Hazard identification (Expert survey)
No comprehensive Expert surveys in Comprehensive expert Comprehensive expert Comprehensive expert
surveys have been response to accidents, surveys are conducted, surveys are conducted surveys are conducted
conducted. complaints, or but corrective actions periodically and drive regularly and result in
compliance activity sometimes lag. appropriate corrective corrective action and
only. action. updated hazard inventories.
Hazard identification (Change analysis)
No system for hazard Hazard reviews of High hazard planned Every planned or new Every planned or new
review of planned or planned or new or new facility, process, facility, process, facility, process, material, or
new facilities exists. facilities, processes, material or equipment material, or equipment equipment is fully reviewed
materials, or are reviewed. is fully reviewed by a by a competent team, along
equipment are competent team. with affected workers.
problem driven.

(continued on next page)

49
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Hazard identification (Job and process analysis)
There is no routine A hazard analysis A current hazard A current hazard A current hazard analysis
hazard analysis system program exists, but analysis exists for all analysis exists for all exists for all jobs, processes,
in place. few are aware of it. jobs, processes, or jobs, processes, and and material; it is
phases and is material and it is understood by all
understood by many understood by all employees; and employees
employees. employees. have had input into the
analysis for their jobs.
Hazard identification (Inspection)
There is no routine An inspection program Inspections are Inspections are Employees and supervisors
inspection program in exists, but corrective conducted and most conducted and all are trained, conduct routine
place and many action is not complete; items are corrected, items are corrected; joint inspections, and all
hazards can be found. hazards remain but some hazards are repeat hazards are items are corrected.
uncorrected. still uncorrected. seldom found.
Hazard Reporting System
There is no hazard A system exists for A system exists for A system exists for A system exists for hazard
reporting system and/ hazard reporting but hazard reporting and hazard reporting and reporting, employees feel
or employees are not employees find it employees feel they employees feel comfortable using it, and
comfortable reporting unresponsive or are can use it, but the comfortable using it. employees feel comfortable
hazards. unclear how to use it. system is slow to correcting hazards on their
respond. own initiative.
Accident/Incident Investigation
Injuries are either not Some investigation of OSHA-reportable All OSHA-reportable All loss-producing incidents
investigated or incidents takes place, incidents are generally incidents are and near-misses are
investigation is limited but root cause is investigated; accident investigated and investigated for root cause
to report writing seldom identified and cause and/correction effective prevention is with effective prevention.
required for correction is spotty. may be inadequate. implemented.
compliance.
Injury/illnesses analysis
Little or no effort is Data is centrally Data is centrally Data trends are fully Data trends are fully
made to analyze data collected and analyzed collected and analyzed analyzed and analyzed and displayed,
for trends, causes, and but not widely and common causes displayed, common common causes are
prevention. communicated for are communicated to causes are communicated,
prevention. supervisors. communicated, and management ensures
management ensures prevention; and employees
prevention. are fully aware of trends,
causes, and means of
prevention.

50
III. HAZARD PREVENTION AND CONTROL
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Timely and effective hazard control
Hazard control is not Hazard controls are Hazard controls are Hazard controls are Hazard controls are fully in
complete, effective, generally in place, but fully in place, but there fully in place with place, known and
and appropriate. there is heavy reliance is some reliance on priority to engineering supported by work force,
on personal protective personal protective controls, safe work with concentration on
equipment. equipment. procedures, engineering controls and
administrative safe work procedures.
controls, and personal
protective equipment
(in that order).
Facility and Equipment Maintenance
There is little or no A preventive A preventive An effective preventive Operators are trained to
attention paid to maintenance schedule maintenance schedule maintenance schedule recognize maintenance
preventive is in place but is often is in place and is is in place and needs and perform and
maintenance; allowed to slide. usually followed applicable to all order maintenance on
break-down except for higher equipment. schedule.
maintenance is the priorities.
rule.
Emergency Planning and Preparation
Little effort is made to There is an effective There is an effective There is an effective There is an effective
prepare for emergency response emergency response emergency response emergency response plan
emergencies. plan, but training and plan and team, but plan and employees and employees know
drills are weak and other employees may have a good immediately how to
roles may be unclear. be uncertain of their understanding of respond as a result of
responsibilities. responsibilities as a effective planning, training,
result of plans, and drills.
training, and drills.
Emergency Equipment
There is little or no Emergency phones, Emergency phones, Facility is well Facility is fully equipped for
effort made to provide directions, and directions, and equipped for emergencies; all systems
emergency equipment equipment are in equipment are in emergencies with and equipment are in place
and information. place, but employees place, but only appropriate and regularly tested; all
show little awareness. emergency teams emergency phones personnel know how to use
know what to do. and directions; equipment and
majority of personnel communicate during
know how to use emergencies.
equipment and
communicate during
emergencies.
Medical Program (Health Providers)
Occupational health Occupational health Occupational health Occupational health Occupational health
assistance is rarely providers are available, providers are providers are involved providers are regularly
requested or provided. but normally consulted about in hazard assessment on-site and fully involved.
concentrate on significant health and training.
employees who get concerns in addition to
hurt. accidents.
Medical Program (Emergency Care)
Neither on-site nor Personnel with basic Either on-site or Personnel with basic Personnel fully trained in
community aid can be first aid skills are nearby community aid first aid skills are emergency medicine are
ensured at all times. usually available, with is always available on always available always available on-site.
community assistance day shift. on-site, all shifts.
nearby.

(continued on next page)

51
IV. SAFETY AND HEALTH TRAINING
Dysfunctional Reactive Compliant Proactive Exemplary
Employees Learn Hazards (How to Protect Themselves and Others)
Facility depends on Training is provided Facility provides legally Facility is committed Facility is committed to
experience and when the need is required training and to high-quality high-quality employee
informal peer training apparent; experienced makes effort to include employee hazard hazard training, ensures all
to meet needs. employees are all employees. training, ensures all participate, and provides
assumed to know the participate, and regular updates; in addition,
material. provides regular employees can demonstrate
updates. proficiency in, and support
of, all areas covered by
training.
Supervisors Learn Responsibilities and Underlying Reasons
There is no formal Supervisors make Supervisors have Most supervisors assist All supervisors assist in
effort to train responsible efforts to received basic training, in worksite hazard worksite hazard analysis,
supervisors in safety meet safety and health appear to understand analysis, ensure ensure physical protections,
and health responsibilities, but and demonstrate physical protections, reinforce training, enforce
responsibilities. have limited training. importance of reinforce training, discipline, and can explain
worksite hazard enforce discipline, and work procedures based on
analysis, physical can explain work the training provided to
protections, training procedures based on them.
reinforcement, the training provided
discipline, and to them.
knowledge of work
procedures.
Managers Learn Safety and Health Program Management
Managers generally Managers are Managers generally All managers follow, All managers have received
show little generally able to show a good and can explain, their formal training in safety and
understanding of their describe their safety understanding of their roles in safety and health management
safety and health and health role, but safety and health role health program responsibilities.
management often have trouble and usually model it. management.
responsibilities. modeling it.

* This is a revision of the questionnaire developed for the I2P2 program Construction Safety and
Health Outreach Program (OSHA, 1996): http://www.osha.gov/doc/outreachtraining/htmlfiles/
evaltool.html

52
Appendix 4
SELECTED SAFETY CULTURE/CLIMATE ASSESSMENT TOOLS

Name of tool or survey Used in # of Number and name of included

Author construc- Qs factors (and other notes)
Source tion?

Institute of Work & Health 2011 Utilities 8 Not divided into factors
Benchmarking Organizational Leading Indicators Leading indicator tool developed for
for the Prevention and Management of Injuries Ontario workplaces
and Illnesses: Final Report.
http://www.iwh.on.ca/benchmarking-
organizational-leading-indicators

Dedobbeleer & Beland 1991 Yes 9 2

A safety climate measure for construction sites. - Management commitment
Journal of Safety Research 22(2): 97-103 - Worker involvement
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/
pii/002243759190017P

DeArmond et al. 2011 Yes 10 2

Individual safety performance in the construction - Safety compliance
industry: Development and validation of two - Safety participation
short scales.
Accident Analysis and Prevention 43 (948–954)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0001457510003647

Zohar & Luria, 2005 Yes 16 6

A Multilevel Model of Safety Climate: 3 Organizational Level
Cross-Level Relationships Between Organization - Active practices (monitoring,enforcing)
and Group-Level Climates. - Proactive practices (promoting learning,
Journal of Applied Psychology development)
2005, Vol. 90, No. 4, 616–628 - Declarative practices (declaring,
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/90/4/616.html informing)
3 Group Level
- Active practices (Monitoring, controlling)
- Proactive practices (Instructing, Guiding)
- Declarative practices (Declaring,
Informing)

Parker et al, 2006 No 18 Uses 5 descriptions (text-based rubrics)

A framework for understanding the development (oil reflecting level of organizational safety
of organizational safety culture. industry) culture maturity
Safety Science 44 (2006) 551 562
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ Descriptions divided into 2 categories:
S0925753505001219 - Concrete organizational aspects
- Abstract organizational concepts

(continued on next page)

53
Name of tool or survey Used in # of Number and name of included
Author construc- Qs factors (and other notes)
Source tion?

Seo et al. 2004 No 30 5

A cross-validation of safety climate scale - Management commitment to safety
using confirmatory factor analytic approach. - Supervisor safety support
Journal of Safety Research 35 (2004) 427– 445 - Coworker safety support
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ - Employee participation in safety-related
S0022437504000817 decision making and activities
- Competence level of employees with
regard to safety

Pousette et al. 2008

Yes 33 4
Safety climate cross-validation, strength Swedish - Management safety priority
and prediction of safety behavior. tunnel - Safety management
Safety Science 46 (2008) 398–404 workers - Safety communication
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ - Workgroup safety involvement
S0925753507000926

Neal, Griffin & Hart 2000

Yes 35 8
The impact of organizational climate on safety but not - Management values
climate and individual behavior. published - Communication
Safety Science, 34, 99-109, 2000 - Training
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ - Physical Work Environment
S0925753500000084 - Safety Systems
- Knowledge
- Motivation
- Behavior

Zohar, 1980 Yes 40 8

Safety Climate in Industrial Organizations: - Management attitude toward safety
Theoretical and Applied Implications - Work pace and safety
Journal of Applied Psychology 1980, Vol. 65, - Effects of safe conduct on promotion
No. 1, 96-102 - Effect of safe conduct on social status
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/65/1/96.pdf - Perceived risks
- Perceived importance of safety training
- Perceived status of safety officer
- Perceived status of safety committee

UK HSE Safety Climate Tool 1997

Yes 43 8
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ (2012 - Organizational commitment
sbe/downloads/pmdc/safety-climate- London - Health and Safety oriented behavior
assessment-toolkit.pdf Olympics) - Health and Safety Trust
- Usability of Procedures
- Engagement in health and safety
- Peer group attitude
- Resources of health and safety
- Accidents and near miss reporting

54
Name of tool or survey Used in # of Number and name of included
Author construc- Qs factors (and other notes)
Source tion?

Gittleman et al. CPWR survey, 2010

Yes 44 Not divided into factors
[Case Study] CityCenter and Cosmopolitan (Las Vegas
Construction Projects, Las Vegas, Nevada: City Center Survey includes separate questions for
Lessons learned from the use of multiple sources Project) general contractor and subcontractors
and mixed methods in a safety needs assessment.
Journal of Safety Research Volume 41, Issue 3,
June 2010, Pages 263–281
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0022437510000447

Nordic occupational safety climate Yes 50 7

questionnaire Kines, et al. - Management safety priority, commitment,
http://www.arbejdsmiljoforskning.dk/en/ and competence
publikationer/spoergeskemaer/nosacq-50 - Management safety empowerment
- Management safety justice
- Workers’ safety commitment
- Workers’ safety priority and risk non-
acceptance
- Safety communication, learning, and
trust in co-workers safety competence
- Trust in the efficacy of safety systems

Currently translated into 25 languages.

55
Appendix 5
Participants’ Evaluation of the Workshop

In the last 10 minutes of each session participants were asked to retrieve from their folder a
color-coded session-specific evaluation form. On each were 3 or 4 close-ended questions that
asked for their perceptions of how valuable the session was for their current and on-going work
related to safety climate and culture. There were also 2 open-ended questions for each session
asking them to name the most and least valuable aspects of the session. The number of respon-
dents varied somewhat due to people leaving, and forgetting to complete the evaluation, although
it never dipped below 60% (the workshop planning team did not complete the evaluations making
the total number of possible respondents 65). The results in the Table show that across all
sessions, the majority of respondents found the activities to be extremely or mostly valuable and
only a very small % finding any session to be not at all valuable.

Extremely Mostly Somewhat Not at all

Valuable Valuable Valuable Valuable

Framing session

How valuable was the presentation for framing the current safety 20.0% 60.0% 18.2% 1.8%
culture/ climate issues in construction? (N=55)

How valuable was having the group select working definitions of 32.7% 29.1% 32.7% 5.5%
safety culture and safety climate? (N=55)

Session 1 

How valuable was the activity where you listed and mapped factors 53.7% 37.0% 9.3% 0.0%
that contribute to safety climate/culture? (N=54)

How valuable was discussing and agreeing on the top 5 factors that 55.6% 37.0% 5.6% 1.9%
contribute to safety climate/culture? (N=54)

Session 2 

How valuable was it working as a group to develop rubrics for the 42.9% 38.1% 19.0% 0.0%
factors? (N=42)

How valuable were the “igniter” presentations for setting the stage 44.7% 42.1% 13.2% 0.0%
for this session? (N=38)

Session 3

How valuable was this session for giving you new ideas of solutions 34.8% 43.5% 19.6% 0.0%
to improve safety culture and climate? (N=46)

How valuable was this session for giving you ideas of how to 26.1% 37.0% 34.8% 2.2%
effectively implement solutions? (N=46)

How valuable was this session for discussing specific barriers and 37.0% 28.3% 30.4% 4.3%
facilitators to effective implementation? (N=46)

The vast majority of comments were positive and the one most often mentioned was having the
opportunity to discuss and share ideas with stakeholders representing other constituencies. The
vast majority of negative comments had to do with the limited amount of time for discussion. A
few also mentioned that there was some overlap across the sessions.

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