Abstract - This paper defines and describes
Organizational Culture and specifically focuses on what constitutes a
satisfactory Nuclear Safety Culture. The author differentiates between
the two with Nuclear Safety Culture being a component or subset
of Organizational Culture. The paper summarizes some of the key
factors that should be considered when improving the nuclear safety culture and
those that have a negative impact on organizational and human performance
such as a hidden or abusive culture. It describes a methodology for
evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the nuclear safety culture
using characteristics, performance or success indicators, and designing a
culture improvement program from the results of a culture
assessment. It also describes when it is necessary to assess culture
conditions and implement an improvement program.
As
a matter of public responsibility, the management of any nuclear facility has a
duty and obligation to foster the development of the appropriate safety
culture, and to provide a professional working environment in the control room
and throughout the facility that assures safe operations. Beyond public
responsibility, fostering safety is simply smart business. Insufficient attention to safety puts a
plant at risk of extended outages that can cost hundreds of millions of
dollars, threatening the economic viability of the investment. The history of
the industry indicates that the plants that operate safest tend to be the most
economical and productive as well in the long run.
Organizational Culture - There
are conflicting views as to an exact definition as to what the word
“culture” is and what it isn’t. In “The Human Equation,” Jeffrey Pfeffer
argues that a good business culture equates to having a human-centered
management practice, and that this consistently leads to enhanced
organizational performance, including the financial bottom line. MIT Professor and famous culture expert
Edgar Schein has many definitions of culture, the simplest definition
being “the way we do things around here.”
Schein divides culture into three levels related to people and
organizations: 1) artifacts, 2) espoused values, and 3) the basic underlying
assumptions which Schein describes as the core, or essence of culture.
Nisberg, 1988, defined culture as: “The body of beliefs, attitudes, values,
patterns of behavior, social forms, language, and material adjuncts of a social
group; by extension, the consistent habits, values, and customs of an
organizational environment.”
The culture of
an organization guides how its employees work, dress, make decisions, think,
communicate, and behave. Changing
culture can either be conscious or unintentional. Change will ruthlessly destroy a company with a culture that does
not adapt. The smart leader ensures
that the culture adapts correctly to maintain a competitive edge. Culture leadership requires being aware of
and finely tuned to changing environmental conditions, looking at forming a
vision of where the organization needs to go, and articulating the new
vision. It requires eliminating the
wrong behavior. The company vision
defines where the culture is headed.
Once the vision and new behavioral expectations are articulated, the
leader must ensure that the requisite behavioral changes occur. If within an appropriate amount of time the
requisite behavior changes do not occur, people change outs may be necessary. Change outs are appropriate when a person is
knowingly violating management expectations.
In some cases, the employee’s behavior may not model the stated vision,
because the culture does not support the vision.
During operational review interviews at all levels of
management in nuclear organizations, the author asked hundreds of managers and engineers to define their concept of the
terms organizational culture. The answers could be summarized in two
statements: 1) The culture is the way we do business around here, and not necessarily
the way the company says how we do business, and 2) The culture of an
organization is its unique personality, like the personality of an individual.
Unfortunately, many people view “culture” as a fuzzy, amorphous abstraction,
largely because of a lack of a precise definition. This lack of any formalized or universally accepted definition of
the word “culture” has hindered the development of strategies to change and
improve it. Specifically, it has inhibited the development of a
uniform standard and processes by which the nuclear industry can design
programs to improve the nuclear safety culture.
There is a
need for a definition and a framework for understanding culture, a set of
analytical tools and methodology. The
purpose of this paper is to provide those tools and methodology, a distillation
of lessons learned from the many success stories observed and analyzed by the
author. In today’s rapidly changing
business environment, the one common denominator is businesses that survive have
cultures that can successfully adapt.
No business will succeed without the appropriate organizational culture
in place, and no nuclear plant will survive without the appropriate safety
culture.
Nuclear Safety
Culture - A good
nuclear safety culture (NSC) is a work environment where a safety ethic
permeates the organization and people’s behavior focuses on accident prevention
through critical self-assessment, pro-active identification of management and
technical problems, and appropriate, timely, and effective resolution of the
problems before they become crises. (Wert, 1986) The above description can be used as
a solid vision for a nuclear safety culture program. It can be supported by numerous, quantifiable objectives and
strategies for implementation, monitoring and evaluating results of an overall
program. Thus, a safety culture must be
results-oriented, both in regard to positive outcomes achieved and negative
outcomes avoided. This also requires
the wisdom to understand that indicators are not “managed.” Rather, the concentration must be on
performance and seeing what the results are.
The above working definition linked with the author’s Effective Safety Culture Characteristics
for Nuclear Plants (or
performance indicators), Attachment A, form the foundation for an effective methodology
to measure the strengths and weaknesses of a nuclear safety culture at any
nuclear facility.
Hidden Culture - Some organizations formally
describe their culture in writing as being one where things are done a certain
way according to policies and regulations, but they do the opposite in
day-to-day operations. For example, at nuclear plants, the leaders may
declare an “open culture” exists or
that they support a “questioning attitude” on one hand, while actually
practicing a “shoot the messenger” mentality or philosophy when the NRC or INPO
is not around. In summary, a hidden
culture is the difference between what is said will be done by the organization leaders, and what is actually done by
members of the organization. This is
characteristic of process-oriented organizations. They are more interested in how it looks than how well it is done
based on appropriate, measured results.
Following a regulatory-mandated process does not assure safety culture
any more than going through a prescribed wedding ceremony guarantees a happy
marriage. What both are based on is
COMMITMENT to do the right things for the right reasons at the right times. Organizations with hidden culture also tend
to be focused almost exclusively on short-term financial results and reactive
to government agency pressures.
Abusive Culture
- Some present day organizations, including nuclear, are still fostering some
aspects of an abusive industrial era culture in their transformation to an
information age culture. An abusive culture stifles good ideas and
innovation, the very things that are needed for long-term success and survival
of an organization. Such abuse takes on many forms: “shoot the messenger”
mentality, hidden agendas, harassment, increased surveillance, discrimination,
demotion without cause, presenting an inconsistent management philosophy to
employees, unclear values, conflicting values, disruptive leaders, destructive
leaders, rampant emotionalism, dictatorial or authoritarian management styles,
rewarding inappropriate behavior, over work or poor workload balance, we/they
attitude, fragmentation, arbitrary dismissal, micromanagement, generation of
fear and insecurity about the future, placing blame, withholding resources,
humiliation, confrontation, antagonism, and making unreasonable demands.
These types of organizations are likely to claim that they are performance
oriented, but typically the “performance” they are most concerned about relates
to senior management pay incentives rather than optimum performance of the
overall organization. Such conditions
bring about excessive stress, illness, nervous breakdowns, burnout, etc., which
lead to lowered morale and motivation. This leads to people paying less
attention to detail, increased human errors, and it has a negative impact on
productivity and workplace safety. An abusive culture is devastating to
any sound nuclear safety culture initiative. The downside of an abusive culture
is that it punishes some of the behaviors that support nuclear safety. If
the above forms of abuse are obvious to the leaders of any organization, it
would behoove them to initiate a culture assessment and implement a change
management program to improve the culture.
See below: When a Safety
Culture Assessment and Improvements are Necessary on other conditions
that warrant a culture review and improvement program.
Safety
Conscious Work Environment (SCWE) - A SCWE means basically the
same thing as a good nuclear safety culture at a nuclear
facility. A SCWE means: 1. all employees have the duty to raise concerns
regarding nuclear safety and quality-related issues that may effect safe
operation of a nuclear plant; 2. all employees have the right to raise concerns
without fear of reprisal; 3.
there is a work environment in which employees feel free to raise safety
concerns without fear of retaliation;
4. that concerns be prioritized and promptly resolved with feedback
provided to the concerned employee; 5. recognize that internal processes tend
to understate performance problems and external evaluations tend to be biased
based more on the organizational reputation than on actual performance; and 6.
have an appreciation for “Murphy’s Law.” Failure to foster a SCWE
discourages employees and contract personnel from reporting safety and quality
concerns or issues, and results in a “chilling effect.” “Brown noses” tend to
flourish in this type of environment, and their public affairs spokespeople
tend to sound like the late Iraqui Minister of Information. Examples of a
“Chilling Effect” are employees that are reluctant to voice concerns for fear
that they may be identified or retaliated against, employees or contractors
that are discouraged from raising concerns as a result of awareness of discrimination,
and management failing to act promptly to deal with acts of intimidation. In short, leaders in these organizations
bring to mind the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wiz” – “don’t you bring me
no bad news.”
Empowerment and
Nuclear Safety Culture - An empowerment component is an essential
or fundamental aspect of nuclear safety culture, one which is
characterized by: leaders or managers serving as catalysts for needed changes:
management by walking around (MBWA) to observe what is actually going on and
getting direct unfiltered feedback from the workers; planned change; people
embracing change; employee involvement in the formulation of goals and
decision-making processes; positive recognition or reward for exhibiting the
appropriate behaviors; listening to associates; ethical leadership with the leaders communicating instead of
litigating; leaders making sure that ethical standards are followed and clearly
understood; delegating responsibility with matching authority; well
communicated and clarified expectations; trust; continuous improvement; high
standards; coaching; people development; career planning; learning from
mistakes; accepting ownership of problems; open communications; questioning
attitude; technical rigor; innovation; individual and group accountability;
providing routine, positive feedback on performance; timely problem resolution;
doing the job right the first time; sharing knowledge; cross-functional
communication (this goes far beyond merely exchanging pro forma e-mails and memos);
accepting risk but thinking it through (recognizing that doing nothing usually
poses the greatest risk over the medium-to long-term); being a team player;
looking in a 360 degree circle at problems and understanding the large
organizational issues; flexibility; contributing; confidence; and monitoring
and evaluating progress to obtain the desired results. Developing an effective safety culture
program requires a strong focus on CARE, TRUST, WISDOM and EXCELLENCE, most of
which seem to be in short supply and need nurturing if an organization is to
remain excellent over the long-term. It
is especially important for organization leaders to have an “BS detector” so
that inferior work products and decisions based on short-term results or
individual career aspirations do not lead to later, larger problems. In short, fakes and poseurs need to be
identified and shown the door – QUICKLY. This also requires that people who are
in roles that are beyond their competence (the “Peter Principle”) be
re-assigned to roles in their demonstrated area of competence.
Culture Change
Requirements - At a nuclear plant, culture characteristics, and the
level of effort put into a safety culture program at a nuclear plant, must
change with aging equipment, competition, regulations, opportunities, etc., in
order for the organization to survive and grow. The generally accepted industry Effective Safety Culture Characteristics for Nuclear Plants are
attached to this paper or may be found at: www.mdi-wert.com
These characteristics of a healthy safety culture may also be referred to as
performance or success indicators. The level or degree to which each
characteristic exists at any given nuclear plant can be measured effectively
through interviews, tests, surveys, work observation, and review of the
operating record or documentation. For example, if a specific nuclear
plant has accepted culture characteristics such as: “A
comprehensive, well implemented safety culture that provides the supporting
infrastructure (that includes qualified people, adequate information, adequate
money and staff, as well as continuing senior management commitment) needed to
ensure high levels of production over the life of the plant; evidence of
conservative decision making by management and defense-in-depth” one can
determine the existence of, and level of commitment to such characteristics.
With the above example, one would expect to find a well written or defined safety culture
program. One element of this would be to analyze the record for
conservative decision making in regard to operations. By following the
assessment process proposed, one can describe the nuclear safety culture
conditions of any plant in detail.
Effective
Safety Culture Characteristics That are Frequently Missing or Deficient
- Most of the big safety problems at a nuclear plant can be prevented
and/or fixed through improvement or
corrective action initiatives related to eight safety culture characteristics
or attributes: 1. A comprehensive, well
implemented safety culture that provides the supporting infrastructure needed
to ensure safety and production over
the life of the plant; 2. Maintaining a questioning attitude,
expect the unexpected; 3. Reward for reporting suspected or actual safety problems (the corrective
action system should have a low threshold for entry) and fixing them over
keeping the plant on line...back to 1. (See also below: The Importance of a Sound Incentive or
Reward System). Reward the required behaviors to maintain a good
nuclear safety culture. Those behaviors must be written, communicated,
understood and practiced in the workplace on a day-to-day basis; 4. Maintaining a manageable backlog of
problems to be corrected; 5. Pro-active problem identification with priority
based upon safety significance…short
and long-term safety and financial ramifications considered; 6. Fixing problems
in a timely manner based on their significance and do the job right the first time; 7. Conservative decision making
by management (conservative decision making recognizes both risk and
consequence) and defense-in-depth; 8. Emphasis on individual
accountability; 9. Clear mission, vision, values, culture
statement, policies, standards or expectations communicated and clarified
from top to bottom in the organization...putting the content of these into
day-to-day practice, and 10.
Sound management qualifications and training according to the position,
authority and responsibility.
Early Founder
Influence - Organizational leaders
are the prime determinant of the organizational and safety culture. The culture
of an organization has often been created by a founder or senior leader and
fostered by its management team from top to bottom in the organization over
time. One could envision that the culture may have been designed,
developed or fostered like a house being built a brick at a time. Anyone
found removing any of these bricks to change things may find their actions to
be un-welcomed, particularly if the leader is still in control and wants to
keep or maintain the status quo. However, in the nuclear business, this
influence has been decreasing if not totally eliminated in some organizations
due to competition, changes in ownership, industry consolidation, changes in technology,
changes in senior management, and continued pressure to decrease staff size and
compensation.
Culture Change Requires Time - There are
few, desirable quick fixes
that will result in desirable changes to organizational culture after
replacing the responsible senior managers. It can occur more rapidly with
top-level commitment or change outs, but it frequently requires several years
to change the culture of an organization.
Long-term commitment to improved safety culture must begin with the
licensed operators. They are the most
important group to ensure safety, and they are the hardest to replace. Other safety culture conditions can be
changed more readily with an operations staff that has a proper safety culture.
They will keep the organizational focus continued on safe operation or the
plant.
Safety First or
Production First – All U.S. commercial
nuclear plants are operated safely almost all of the time. This can be easily confirmed by a review of
industry performance indicators and trends. As plants age, inherent safety
margins in the equipment are reduced and aging effects (some of which were not
considered or even known at the time of original design and licensing) come increasingly into play. Thus, safety
culture becomes more important over the operating lifetime. Strict adherence to the license conditions
does not guarantee that unanticipated problems that may crop up are prevented
merely by adhering to the license conditions.
Management may be more concerned about cost containment due to
competition, and it places greater emphasis on short-term cost reduction over
long-term costs or consequences – basing their decisions on the hidden
assumption that the safety envelope and margins are always at least as good as
the design and the license assumed them to be. Experience has shown that
fixing problems quickly or killing them dead, doing the job right the first
time, and not putting them off until the next regularly scheduled outage, can
save a lot of public relations, regulatory, and financial problems.
Operating a safe plant reduces the overall cost of operations over the
long-term. Some leaders of nuclear
plants will state in their communications that the first priority is safety,
but their day-to-day operation records and views or perceptions of the
employees indicate they are production driven.
The Importance
of a Proper Incentive or Reward System Design- Care must be taken
when designing an incentive or bonus program so it does not place too
much emphasis on production, reliability, exceeding outage goals, and not
enough on identifying, reporting, and
fixing all safety problems. There are
two things to remember in regard to incentive systems: 1. you get what you pay
for, and 2. insofar as giving incentives based on short-term financial results,
to quote the old Fram oil filter commercial: “you pay me now or you pay me
(much, much more) later.” Bonuses
given to individuals (managers) or groups for keeping the plant on line and not
fixing safety significant problems when they arise until the next regularly
scheduled outage, can work against a good nuclear safety culture. They
tend to motivate people to ignore or write problems away to justify continued
operation, and can contribute to a “shoot the messenger” mentality.
Instead, individuals who report problems, that if not fixed, could result in a
lot of down time, lost revenue and expense, should be positively recognized and
financially rewarded. In short, senior
managers should be rewarded based on longer term rolling plant availability and
sustaining improving trends in key indicators that are under their control, not
quarterly results. This will put the
incentive where it belongs which is on
sustained long-term safe operation.
Incentives also must reward the ability to identify, develop, nurture
and maintain key operational, maintenance and engineering staff to assure that
safety culture and safe, profitable plant operation can be maintained over the
long haul.
Defense In Depth (DiD) - A sound
DiD environment combines multi-functional area engineering design strategies,
appropriate training and capabilities of operators and maintainers,
comprehensive operational, maintenance and test procedures that facilitate
verbatim compliance, and additional containment and security technologies
to establish multiple and integrated layers of safety protection, all intended
ultimately to keep fission products under control. Thus, the
nuclear plant environment provides multiple, overlapping protections that work
independently or in conjunction to minimize the risk that both anticipated and
unanticipated fission product escape paths exist. While some technical
people try to define the probabilities associated with all of this, the real
goal is to make such paths and their associated scenarios as literally
impossible as can be achieved. The goal is zero fission products getting
into the environment for the next million years even with many thousands of
nuclear plants online. Any claims to lesser goals merely reflect man's limitations
in achieving that goal, which argues for adding as many layers to the DiD
environment that we can reasonably define. The bottom line is that a poor or degraded safety culture defeats
the purpose of DiD. Therefore, having
good DiD also means having a good safety culture.
Complacency and
Arrogance Influence - When equipment at a plant is new, operating it may
appear to be easier to the casual observer than with aging equipment.
However, new plants experience a relatively high number of instances of problems
or transients, and as these get worked out and the staff becomes skilled in
operating the equipment, the number of them settles out at a relatively lower
number of instances. Then as the equipment ages and reaches design
limits, wear limits, etc., the number of instances of problems or transients
begin to increase. The initial experience of improving operations may
actually lead to a higher level of complacency than one would expect.
Maintaining safety is more challenging in these instances. Constant
training, qualification, high standards of performance and drills were some of
the tools used in the nuclear Navy to keep the crew sharp and minimize
complacency. The presence of the two conditions of arrogance and complacency can lead to financial disaster for the
owners of nuclear facilities. To be safe, one must use the best industry
practices, track the performance problems at other similar plants during their
life cycle, and continually strive for excellence in operations. This
includes anticipating problems, and being proactive in resolving them or
preventing them from ever occurring. It
also includes benchmarking against international standards to ensure that the
nuclear plant is in step with internationally accepted standards.
Technical/Management
Skills Balance - The leaders of nuclear facilities need a balance
between their technical and management expertise. It is a known fact that
some technically trained individuals lack the appropriate people/management
skills, and they don’t fully appreciate the importance of management skills or
those elements commonly referred to as “soft” management issues or “touchy,
feely” things. Sometimes highly technically trained people refuse to
accept that things such as organizational and safety culture can be
measured. If they have been trained in the military, they may exhibit an
arrogant, autocratic or dictatorial management style, which leads to lowered
employee morale and motivation in their associates or subordinates. When
this type of leader doesn’t change his/her style or isn’t retrained or
replaced, complex human performance issues develop, and these can have a
negative effect on human performance and nuclear safety. This is the “Peter Principle” were people
are promoted to their level of incompetence where they become a drag on the
whole organization. The reason for such
promotions is almost always tied to short-sighted wage and promotion policies
that do not allow career progression and adequate compensation for key
personnel that are not in management.
They key indicator of a “Peter Principle” is someone whose
responsibilities are tied primarily to process and not to measurable
performance results. Such staffers become
the “thermal layer” between senior management seeking to inculcate a safety
culture and the workers. This is why
MBWA and a BS detector is so important to senior mangers seeking to create and
to sustain a safety culture. It
provides a direct and independent way to verify competence of key management
and leadership positions.
Board,
President, Chief Nuclear Officer Role is Critical to Success - Although
it may not be a widely accepted view, the Board, President, and Chief
Nuclear Officer (CNO) have the primary responsibility for establishing,
changing, monitoring, and evaluating both the appropriate organizational and
nuclear safety culture. Continuous high level leadership, commitment, and
support is required to nurture and maintain a good safety culture. This
requires that the CNO communicates a clear message that nuclear safety is the
highest priority. The expectations from
the top must be in writing and communicated down though the organizational
layers to employees until they are clarified, understood, and put into
practice. It is important that the
leader also does this communicating during the MBWA initiative. Before
safety culture can be measured it must be defined with benchmarks along with
the required behaviors. What gets
measured gets done. Changing and
improving safety culture requires changing individual behavior. The top leaders must be mindful that a good
safety culture can be quickly undermined, fail or go into decline, and that it
is perishable. It is important to note
that a review of inspection results revealed that the basic root cause of many
safety problems ended up being tracked back to the doorstep of management…poor,
wrong, delayed or no decision.
Improving the safety culture requires an “open door” policy (and an open
mind) in regards to safety and performance issues.
The role of the leader in shaping the culture includes, but is not limited to: 1. defining the required culture (organizational and safety) , and describing desired culture conditions, values, beliefs, vision, goals, and expectations, 2. defining and clarifying change so it is understood and less disruptive, 3. building two-way trust at all levels in the organization, 3. ensuring that employees have the necessary training and skills, 4. showing genuine care and concern for people, 5. presenting a consistent management philosophy, 6. leading by example, being a role model or hero, 7. managing value conflicts, 8. keeping promises, 9. frequently writing about the company’s culture, 10. showing trust through delegation of work, 11. holding managers and supervisors accountable for actions and decisions that promote and maintain safety culture, leadership by positive example is thereby reinforced, and 12. promoting good communications upward, downward, and sideways. As a part of, or in addition to the above, the company leader can also help shape, maintain or improve the culture conditions by: being a champion in the safety culture crusade, serving as an agent in bringing about simultaneous changes, providing visionary leadership and creating the energy for culture transformation, replacing turf wars with better team work, creating strategic visioning and a visionary strategy, developing a vision of the future, aligning the organization to its vision, creating resources or reallocating them to support the culture transformation, being a good listener and developing good feedback mechanisms, and being able to reposition the company organization quickly. Again, always remember you get what you pay for.
One Solution....Establish a Organizational Development (OD) Unit for Organizational Culture (OC) and Nuclear Safety Culture (NSC) - Organizational culture and nuclear safety culture are interrelated. Both are critical to the long-term health, success, and profitability of a nuclear plant, and can become quickly degraded, often due to either changes in the competitive environment or changes in leadership. For both the organization culture and the nuclear safety culture to successfully adapt to these changes, continuous monitoring and nurturing by leadership is essential. The economic viability of the facility can depend on how successfully the owner is able to read and manage the culture. If the nuclear safety culture is sound, the plant owner needs to vigilantly maintain it. If conditions are degraded, there is the benefit of knowing about it early on so improvement strategies can be implemented. Deregulation and other environmental factors have created new competitive pressures that today require cultures to be adaptive to ensure successful change and economic survival. Companies with adaptive cultures survive, companies without adaptive cultures do not. Successful companies today, have an office to provide cultural leadership, with high visibility in the organizational structure. A sample job description for this position is provided in Attachment B.
Downsizing Effect On Culture - A poorly
planned and executed downsizing program to cut costs can have a
drastic, negative impact on safety culture due to the instability
it creates. Maintaining stability is the key to a sound nuclear safety
culture. A poorly thought out downsizing initiative destroys trust that
is essential between an employer and employee. It humiliates people,
creates fear and uncertainty in those who leave, and the “walking wounded” that
remain behind. Unless it can maximize performance for those that stay,
what appears to be a “quick fix” for reducing costs will be at long-term
expense. And, downsizing can be done without destroying the lives of
people. Downsizing for cost containment can have a very negative impact
on morale, productivity, and safety. If a nuclear plant begins a
downsizing initiative at a time when its safety performance is already
questionable with the regulator, it can lead to financial disaster.
Perception and
Culture - If, for example, interviewees at a nuclear plant
perceive that the plant is “production driven” over “safety first driven,”
there is a problem whether this is fact or fiction. Steps must be taken
to fix the problem(s) and/or the perceptions. Perception defines reality
in many businesses today.
When a
Safety Culture Assessment and Improvements are Necessary - The
highest production record has little significance when its not achieved safely
or if the safety culture is failing. If one or more of the conditions
listed below applies to your nuclear organization, then it most likely needs an
evaluation of its culture: 1. When there is no safety culture policy
being promoted from the Chief Nuclear Officer down, the words "safety
culture" and required behaviors haven't been defined in writing,
communicated, understood, and put into practice from top to bottom in the
organization. Before you can correct or improve safety culture, you must
know what "safety culture" means, and understand the human behavior
and performance factors that make it strong and/or weak; 2. When you are
operating with significant known
problems or degraded equipment conditions; 3. When you are coming off a
record production run. Success may create an organizational self-concept that
is not anticipatory of failure; 4. When you haven't considered
nuclear safety culture conditions as a part of inspection
information in its totality, in order to have a sound, overall reading on
performance for decision making; 5. When the increasing importance of
safety culture is not recognized as your plant ages; 6. Whenever you don't have an independent and balanced
assessment on your plant safety culture; 7. When you are operating on
assumptions and promoting "safety first," but do not question
whether you have prioritized and corrected all problems according to
their safety significance, and committed the necessary resources to fix
them, and 8. When the workforce is gradually retiring and replaced with persons
that do not have the same extended frame of reference and shared experience as
past workers. The erosion of a plant’s
experience base, knowledge or history can rapidly lead to degraded nuclear
safety culture conditions because the safety evaluation and significance determination
processes will be based on inferior knowledge.
Key Culture
Assessment Questions - The key questions covered in any
culture assessment include: 1. What positive and negative cultural
conditions exist or were found? (This is the what, when, where, and how
step) 2. What are the required or
desired cultural conditions that should exist or be found? (This is the step
comparing what is with what should be.) 3. What caused the negative cultural
conditions? (This is the step for identification of the cause and not the
symptom.) 4. What are the negative
effects of the cultural conditions found? (This is the step to determine
the present or potential impact on the operations.) 5. What should be done to fix the negative
cultural conditions? (This is the step
to determine what needs to be done to correct the situation or conditions.).
These questions must be asked and answered for each of the Effective Organizational and Safety Culture
Characteristics for Nuclear Plants…or their exact opposites. These five steps
also apply to any other problems found during the assessment.
Culture Assessment Process - The culture
assessment process relies mainly upon interviews, work observation, and review
of documentation. It may also include the use of tests and survey
instruments. The author prefers not to use survey instruments as a
primary means to assess safety culture conditions, because the
respondents know what the survey results will be used for and will
not always give objective or accurate responses. For example, some nuclear utilities provide the survey results to
the regulator as an indication of culture change and improvement. When
respondents know their future existence is linked to their answers, they tend
to give what they perceive to be the company line responses. However, there have been known cases where
employees were objective in their responses.
When employees do answer surveys objectively, and the results indicate a
degraded safety culture, very serious safety concerns exist that need to be
addressed.
Summary
- The goal of this paper was to provide
a comprehensible and functional framework by which to understand both
organizational and nuclear safety culture.
Ideas are outside of the so-called ivory tower and inside the real life
decisions of safe nuclear power plant operation. Because the business environment is constantly changing from
increased competition, cost control, deregulation, and shift to a global
economy, and the organizational culture determines how the company does business,
it is crucial for all nuclear plant owners to conduct periodic assessments of
cultural conditions and make improvements. A good nuclear safety culture is a work environment where a
safety ethic permeates the organization and worker behavior focuses on accident
prevention through critical self-assessment, pro-active identification of
management and technical problems, and appropriate, timely, and effective
resolution of the problems before they become crises. (Wert, 1986)
The safety culture program must be constantly nurtured. Maintaining a good nuclear
safety culture program should include an empowerment component. The owners of
nuclear plants must initiate a nuclear safety culture renaissance that includes
empowering leaders and fostering cross-functional communications and teamwork throughout
the organization. Organizational life is no longer predictable and as
stable as it once was. Unplanned change and a deteriorating, abusive or
inappropriate culture for the time creates instability, fear, insecurity, and
stress, exactly the opposite of what is needed for operating at a level of
excellence at a nuclear plant. Such conditions de-motivate and lead to lower
morale which in turn has a negative impact on human performance, productivity,
and safety.
The nuclear safety culture at a nuclear plant can be measured by determining
the presence or level of existence of industry accepted safety culture
characteristics. By using these characteristics as a guide, conducting
interviews, observing work, and reviewing relevant documentation, the strengths
and weaknesses of the nuclear safety culture may be described in detail. This
information can be used to develop an effective safety culture change
management program, one that will yield measurable results in the shortest
amount of time.
Note: MDI has developed and
field tested the tools to measure a good or failing nuclear safety culture,
describe the specific nuclear safety culture conditions at a nuclear
facility, and ensure that a nuclear plant owners program actually reflect
and promote the appropriate cultural attributes, and that these attributes are
being communicated, understood, and applied at all levels within the nuclear
organization. Other success
indicators and questions to be asked of interviewees, and during work
observation and review of documentation, have not been included in this paper.
We know the best options for how to
improve nuclear safety culture. Please
contact us with any questions, and for additional details.
Jonathan Wert, Ph.D., President
Management
Diagnostics, Inc.
P.O. Box 240
Port Royal, PA 17082-0240
717-527-4399
E-Mail: Jwert@mdi-wert.com
URL: www.mdi-wert.com
1987; Revised 1993, 2003
Note to reader: This
comprehensive listing of organizational culture and nuclear safety culture
characteristics (performance or success indicators) can be used for the
following purposes:
Developing a policy
or culture statement for your company
Developing
expectations, procedures, and standards
Developing
questions for your annual employee attitude survey
Developing measures for evaluating human performance
Developing job
descriptions or specifications
Evaluating the
effectiveness of existing policies and procedures
Developing a
safety policy
Determining the
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) for improving
organizational and nuclear safety culture
Developing the
appropriate reward system
Developing a
sound training program for safety culture transformation
Developing a
change management plan or program to maintain or improve nuclear safety culture
MDI has developed its culture assessment and improvement
strategies around this listing of
characteristics or performance indicators. They can be used to determine the
extent to which each characteristic
exists at a nuclear plant or has been instilled in the behaviors of
plant personnel. This is done through the conduct of: interviews, tests, surveys, review of documentation, and
work observation.
Safety culture defined, communicated and understood; program elements described including
performance metrics for monitoring, evaluating, and reporting progress.
Safety conscious work environment defined, communicated and
understood; program elements described including performance metrics for
monitoring, evaluating, and reporting progress.
A comprehensive, well implemented safety culture that
provides the supporting infrastructure needed to ensure high levels of
production over the life of the plant; evidence of conservative decision making
by management and defense-in-depth; any justification of continued operation
with known degraded conditions is based upon sound information and supporting
documentation.
Individuals maintain a questioning attitude; expect the unexpected; good
planning evident for contingencies or emergencies.
Evidence that the leadership is championing the safety
culture program.
Design and licensing bases maintained according to the
operating license; sound configuration management and control program.
Procedures upgraded in a timely manner and followed.
Management recognizes or rewards the required and appropriate behaviors or
performance of individuals and groups.
Sound program for proactive problem identification through prioritization based
upon safety significance, and resolution, and root cause determination
resulting in an effective corrective action program (CAP). A fully implemented CAP helps management in identifying,
documenting, tracking, and correcting any safety related deficiencies.
Individuals identify, report to management and accept ownership for problems;
problems are "killed dead"; few, if any, repetitive problems.
Sound oversight of nuclear operations, primarily in the areas of QA/QC, but
also by the various internal and external oversight entities; sound quality
assurance audits evident.
No willingness to live with problems evident as indicated by large task
backlogs (both Maintenance and Engineering) and excessive "work
arounds"; no problems of a long-standing nature.
Cost-containment program which emphasizes safety over
production and cost; careful
consideration of both short-term and long-term costs in decision making
evident.
Attention to detail regarding promised improvement programs
and commitments made to the regulator.
Continued emphasis on continuous improvement in all functions supporting safe
operations evident.
Effective Safety Conscious Work Environment and/or employee concerns program
with management commitment evident; open problem solving culture evident; no
"kill the messenger" mentality or retaliation evident.
Effective and efficient work control programs, primarily in their utilization
by operations, maintenance and engineering.
No hidden culture or leadership saying one thing and doing another; leaders
showing genuine care and concern for people, and TRUST between and among
executives, managers, supervisors, and employees at all levels of the
organization is evident.
Long-term, solid solutions to problems over short-term,
quick fixes.
Consistency in communicating the appropriate management philosophy for the
business until it is understood at all levels in the organization.
Decisions based upon facts, not half truths, rumors or assumptions.
Emphasis on direct management involvement, management by walking around (MBWA),
and supervision and coaching with routine feedback provided to individuals on
their performance; evidence that the senior management is involved in work and aware
of actual conditions.
Attention to people concerns and human relations issues; timely conflict
resolution.
Emphasis on team work … working together.
Job security and reward based upon performance and results.
Emphasis on smart work over busy work.
Emphasis on participatory management.
Proactive over reactive response mode on problem resolution; little or no
evidence of crisis management and being externally driven.
Open, honest, and cooperative working relationship with regulators.
Emphasis on individual accountability with the authority to match
responsibility.
Work simplification or process improvement over needless complication and
duplication.
Organization stability; carefully planned and sequenced change to minimize
disruptions to people; impact of organizational and human resources analyzed
carefully before making changes.
Risk taking, not risk avoidance, but accepting responsibility and never
proceeding in the face of uncertainty.
Emphasis on improving communications in all directions, and controlling rumors
and misinformation.
Highly qualified and skilled management team with varied nuclear plant
operating experience.
Clear mission, vision, values, standards or expectations communicated and
understood, and translated into action plants down to the worker level.
People are generally happy and there is evidence of good morale.
Emphasis is on career planning and developing the skills of people in their
needed and demonstrated areas of competence.
Turnover is low among key positions needed to operate the plant safely over the
long-term.
High performance standards are evident – especially for the management team.
Maintaining station institutional memory and operating
experience base evident.
Office politics are discouraged and kept to a minimum.
Individuals are not "burned out" from excessive overtime.
Effective and fully implemented self-assessment program evident.
There is a healthy level of tension or stress.
There is little, if any, evidence of a "we or they" attitude between
employees and their leaders…placing blame.
There are recognized heroes, leaders or role models who lead by the appropriate
example.
No evidence of excessive arrogance, complacency or isolationism.
Effective use of industry experience, best practices, and consistent
implementation of high standards evident.
An effective NSRB or process to identify and correct
abnormal trends.
There is a sound management succession program for all key
people.
the risks and hazards of
non-safe actions; determining how
safe is safe enough
for decision making.
Senior management
with commitment to high ethical standards
and ethical leadership evident.
A focus on long-term
sustained safe performance evident.
Attachment B.
ORGANIZATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
NUCLEAR SAFETY CULTURE
SAMPLE POSITION DESCRIPTION
Description:
Summary: The Director of Organizational Development provides a broad
range of services and support to the President, Chief Nuclear Officer, Human
Resource Department, and Managers at the corporate level down to the nuclear
plant operating level. Services include
organizational design and restructuring, change management, management skills
assessment, management consulting, team formation and development, large group
interventions, organizational culture and nuclear safety culture assessments,
strategic planning, training, and people strategy development.
Responsibilities:
Assists top
corporate executives down to the plant management level with developing,
changing, monitoring, and evaluating organizational and safety culture for
effectiveness.
Consults with
executives, managers and HR to design and develop practical solutions to
business problems.
Partners with
HR and managers on the implementation of people strategies to improve
organizational and human performance?
Consults with
executives and managers on the organizational design of their departments and
business units.
Acts as a
facilitator to drive corporate planning, strategic planning, identification,
definition, and clarification of mission, vision, expectations, required
culture, and culture transformation.
Designs and
implements organizational and human performance improvement initiatives
including the development of performance or success indicators for measuring
results and change.
Actively
manages the change management processes associated with organizational
development and culture transition.
Supports enterprise-wide,
large-scale organizational initiatives and interventions
Designs and facilitates team
development interventions.
Keeps abreast
of best practices and industry standards in the field of organizational
development and nuclear safety.
Actively
participates in professional organizations to learn and share best practices.
Desired Qualifications:
Skill/Experience Requirements:
Exceptional
knowledge of principles of organization design and development, organizational
culture, and nuclear safety culture requirements.
Exceptional knowledge of the
nuclear business, and particularly with corporate planning and safety.
Excellent blending of
management and technical skills.
Excellent project management
and consulting skills.
Practical problem-solving and
strategic thinking skills.
Excellent process consultation
and redesign skills.
Excellent facilitation skills.
Extremely high standards for
personal integrity and professional ethics.
Well-developed professional
maturity, judgment, and tact.
Excellent communication skills;
must be an exceptional listener.
Ability to read the subtle
nuances of a situation and react/plan accordingly.
Excellent operational review
and situation assessment skills.
Track record of
success in helping to solve significant business problems, particularly those
related to culture.
Knowledge about
regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state Public Service
Commissions.
Experience in dealing with and
influencing senior executives.
Ten years of experience in organizational
development, organizational and nuclear safety culture assessment and
transition programs,
management/leadership development, or related disciplines
Demonstrated history of success or advanced degree preferred in one or more of the following disciplines: management, administration, human resources, engineering management, planning.
Specialization
desirable in Organizational Development, Change Management, Organizational
Behavior, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, or related discipline.