As part of an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment an evaluation study was undertaken in 17 companies undertaking safety interventions to improve safety performance through changes to safety culture and management. Overall results of the evaluation of all 17 interventions showed that dialogue with employees about safe working, top management support and a charismatic, creative and persistent coordinator of the project were characteristics of the successes when compared to the failures. One of these initiatives, in a reinforced concrete element construction company, appeared to be particularly effective according to the available outcome and intermediate measures. It had these three characteristics alongside a number of others. This paper describes the intervention, indicating how broad-ranging it was in the changes made. Its major elements involved workers and first line supervision much more in the detection, reporting and decision making about ways to remove the hazards. There was also a major emphasis on altering risk perceptions through risk awareness workshops. The performance data available for this study consisted of injury data covering the three years before and the four years after the start of the intervention, together with data from systematic observations of behaviour. The improvements in behaviour, safety climate and the decrease in injuries were highly significant. The paper contrasts this with an intervention in a fork-lift truck maker, which shows many of the same intervention elements, but has only some of the positive changes, with the main reduction of injuries occurring before the main interventions were introduced. (Author/publisher)
Abstract