The effectiveness of training to change safety culture and attitudes within a highly regulated environment

Abstract

An attitude survey developed by Harvey et al. was used to measure responses from employees in the nuclear industry before and after a safety training intervention which all employees attended in their work teams. The first administration of the survey yielded 417responses, and the second, administered 16 months later following the training intervention, yielded 460 responses, representing response rates of over 69 per cent in both cases. Using six factors derived earlier from the survey, significant improvements in attitudes and beliefs were found for two of the factors (and a further three factors showed rises in the same direction) for management/professional employees. For shop floor employees, only one factor showed a significant change, which was a reduction in job satisfaction over the same time period. It was concluded that the hypotheses that management would respond to the safety initiative but that shop floor would not were supported. A further hypothesis concerning grade differences in culture and attitudes was also supported. These findings are discussed in terms of culture and risk, risk taking and training, where the implications for safety training are crucial.