Top Leaders’ Role and Approach in Transforming Corporates’ Safety Culture

Description

Page: 100-107

Harbans Lal (SNDT Women’s University, Director-Forum of Safety Culture, Mumbai, Maharashtra)

Power of position is used by executives to justify production over safety. Insulting words are used to suppress safety officers. Language control is necessary for managers to not be reactive while suppressing juniors for non-compliance safety behaviors. Most of the time, the safety heads are not consulted for safety issues and decisions as they hold low positions in the organisational hierarchy, and they remain vulnerable. What kind of support do the plant heads and EHS heads expect from the top management and the directors, in order to successfully achieve positive safety cultures at plants/sites? This paper unfolds the top management’s role and approaches in transforming the saafety culture of plants based on field visits to almost 30 site locations and interactions with 243 managers which comprised a sample of this research. It is of utmost importance to raise positions as well as respect the opinions of safety professionals within the company. There are only a few companies where safety heads are holding positions such as GM, ED, and Director that render equation to justify their roles for safety culture transformation in the company. Based on the comprehensive literature reviews and insights from the field practitioners, this paper describes insights and recommendations on the top managements’ role and approach in transforming the safety culture of plants which shall be useful for corporates.