Organizational culture is critical to the safety effort. It's the basis for support, attitude and, ultimately, performance. If the culture of your organization isn't right, you'll need to work to effect changes. This is a big challenge but it's one you can meet if you know the steps to take. Last week, we outlined five of the nine things you can do to change an organization's safety culture. Let's continue with the final four.

6. Provide Management Meaningful Data

Most managers receive daily reports about productivity, quality and costs. So why is it that safety directors provide data to management on a monthly basis? I recommend that you report to management every day on matters such as regulatory contacts, critical safety concerns, injuries, property damage and near misses. You should also submit monthly reports but use them to concentrate on long term matters such as rates, progress toward project completion and activities like training, inspections and audits. All reports should follow a standardized form and be accurate, clear and easy to read.

7. Hold Management and Supervisors Accountable

Make sure that the individuals whom you count on to perform safety functions are held accountable for the way they carry out those functions and control what they're supposed to control - employee attendance at training sessions, timely and accurate accident investigations, audits, etc.

8. Recognize Safety Achievements

Go out of your way to give credit to those who deserve it. Thank them for their efforts. Expressing appreciation is the best way to ensure that you get the same level of effort the next time.

9. Gain Access to Top Management

It goes without saying that without the support of top management, all efforts to change organizational culture are bound to fail. To garner support, you need to gain access to management. How? By providing the information management needs to stay informed. The reporting process naturally creates lines of communication. These lines of communication in turn create opportunity to deepen communication. Implicit in all of this is that you need to seek out management and not try to avoid them. Show me a safety director who ducks into a rest room when he sees an Executive VP walking down the hallway and I'll show you a safety director who's bound to fail.

Conclusion

The task of effecting cultural change is ill-suited for those of you who require instant gratification. Understand that changing an organization's safety culture is a slow process. It requires persistence and patience on your part. But while they won't do it overnight, these nine steps will eventually penetrate and make a decisive difference. Stick with it and you'll see your frustration melt and your organization's safety performance. The safety culture will change even if the people who make and are affected by the change don't realize that it's taking place.

IN A NUTSHELL
The 9 Steps to Change Your Safety Culture

1. Practicing What You Preach (and Vice Versa)
2. Meeting Regulatory Standards
3. Building a Base of Support
4. Promoting the Company Line
5. Training Your Supervisors
6. Providing Management Meaningful Data
7. Holding Management and Supervisors Accountable
8. Recognizing Safety Achievements
9. Gaining Access to Top Management

THIS DATE IN HISTORY
August 22, 1969

Hurricane Camille, August 1969

By Glenn Demby

Before there was Katrina, the hurricane that the people on the Gulf Coast remembered most was Hurricane Camille. On August 15, 1969, Camille officially became a hurricane. It formed south of Cuba, brushed the western edge of the island and moved into the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 3 storm. From there it intensified.

On the morning of August 17, with Camille about 250 miles south of Mobile, a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane took some astonishing measurements: a barometric pressure of 26.84 inches of mercury and winds of more than 200 miles per hour. Civil defense officials issued immediate warnings and ordered evacuations. The measures were later credited with saving thousands of lives.

Sadly, however, not everybody got out. When Camille made shore at Pass Christian, Mississippi, its powerful winds and storm surge of over 24 feet above normal high tide, wreaked massive devastation from Alabama to Louisiana. Before it ended on this date in 1969, Camille had killed 143 people. As Camille moved inland, it killed another 113, mostly in the Appalachians and southern Virginia, as a result of flash floods and landslides.

How does Camille compare to Katrina? Camille was smaller but stronger. Camille's winds were greater but Katrina had a larger and broader storm surge. Katrina also moved more slowly and thus pounded its victims for a longer period of time. New Orleans didn't experience the horrible flooding from Camille that it did after Katrina. One more inevitable comparison: Relief efforts after Camille were much more effective. Food and shelter were available to residents the day after the storm.

Camille was the second strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in the 20th century, trailing only the storm that blasted the Florida Keys on September 2, 1935, back in the days when hurricanes didn't have names. But Camille did have one positive effect: It led to the implementation of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which provides a more accurate and concise method of issuing hurricane warnings.

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