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There are also companies that aim for a certain step on this safety ladder themselves. Aboma's advisors can help with this if required. They offer advice and support at every stage on the way to certification, from zero measurement to implementation.
The Safety Culture Ladder is a tool for measuring, understanding and comparing safety awareness in an organization. The Safety Culture Ladder has five steps. The higher on the ladder, the more safety is experienced in an organization. After step three this goes one step further and it is important to get the chain involved. "The Safety Culture Ladder is all about behavior," says consultant Harm van Heukelum of Aboma. "That is fundamentally different from VCA, for example. And when you are judged on behavior, you also have to look at your organization differently. But how do you do that? Where do you start? With these kinds of questions, companies knock on our door."
Van Heukelum continues: "Wherever you want to go on the Safety Culture Ladder, everything starts with the question: where am I now? As a company, you can perform that baseline measurement yourself, with a Self Assessment. If Aboma supports you in this, we do more than just administer the Self Assessment questionnaire. We interview the management, asking questions such as: What do you mean by safe behavior? What do you want to see in the people on the shop floor? We speak to those people as well, of course. Where necessary, we interpret the questions from the questionnaire. And we look around. Based on all the answers and observations, we make an Action Plan. This sets out the follow-up steps needed to reach the desired level on the Safety Culture Ladder. We discuss these follow-up steps thoroughly to make sure they fit the organization. Only then do they have a chance of success."
After discussing the Plan of Action, the company again has a choice: do we implement the next steps ourselves or with Aboma's support? Van Heukelum: "We can use sixty years of experience to guide managements and employees. We offer various training courses and workshops to increase safety awareness within an organization. For those who supervise the implementation within the organization, for example the KAM manager, we also developed a training course." After going through the implementation process, the certification process with a certifying body follows.
When asked if the Safety Culture Ladder is the certificate of the future, Van Heukelum replied, "The ladder as an instrument does not lend itself to every company. I do think it is important that all companies start paying more conscious attention to safety behavior and culture throughout the organization. There is still much to be gained in that area."
