Methods for Assessing the Safety Culture Level and Practices for Involving Employees in Safety Culture Improvement Processes

Evolution of Safety Culture: From Basic Values to Conscious Behavior

Safety culture has ceased to be a static set of rules and has turned into a fluid matter requiring constant attention and adjustment. In the context of the active development of new businesses and the influx of young personnel, as is happening in the TVEL fuel division (Rosatom), forming a conscious attitude towards safety becomes a strategic task. Vyacheslav Kozlov, Director of the Department at TVEL, emphasizes that a strict control system fails as soon as supervision weakens. The true goal is to achieve a level of awareness where every employee, from line personnel to top management, feels personal responsibility for the safe execution of tasks.

Self-Assessment Methodology: How to Measure the Invisible

Since culture cannot be measured with conventional instruments, structured assessment tools are needed. The presentation details an approach based on IAEA standards. Initially, only surveys and focus groups were used, but since 2021, the toolkit has been expanded to five elements:

• Surveys and focus groups — to identify the general moods and opinions of the team.
• Interviews with line managers — to assess the engagement of the management level and understand their real capabilities to devote time to safety issues.
• Observation of personnel work — recording actual behavior in the workplace without value judgments.
• Documentation analysis — checking the compliance of formal procedures with actual practices.

The speaker shows by example that increasing the number of tools multiplies the volume of facts requiring analysis. This makes training working groups critically important: experts must be able to record facts impartially, separating visible behavior from deep-seated values and attitudes that require adjustment.

From Self-Assessment to an Independent View

Self-assessment is a powerful tool, but it carries the risk of subjectivity: a company always wants to look better in its own eyes. Therefore, external assessment becomes an important stage. Currently, TVEL involves industry experts using a similar methodology. However, the speaker analyzes the prospect of cross-industry assessment — involving specialists from other fields (for example, metallurgy or the oil and gas sector). Such an independent view can reveal blind spots and offer unconventional solutions for further development.

Employee Engagement and the Role of Line Managers

The transition from an engaging to a proactive level of safety culture requires the active participation of all categories of workers. Practice shows high engagement of top management, but at the level of line managers, there is a problem of lack of time: often they have only 4-6% of their working time left for safety issues. Solving this problem requires training in planning and prioritization skills. At the same time, bottom-up initiatives, such as a competition for safe behavior culture projects, demonstrate the high potential of ordinary employees ready to take responsibility with proper management support.

What You Will Learn from This Webinar:

• How to transition from strict control to conscious safe behavior of employees?
• Which five self-assessment tools provide the most objective picture of the state of safety culture?
• Why is the training of working group experts critically important for high-quality fact analysis?
• How does the lack of time among line managers affect safety and how to deal with it?
• What is the value of a cross-industry external assessment of safety culture?