Introduction to Fire Safety Management

the culture because if there is dissatisfaction within the
workplace it is likely that it is as a result of the actions or
omissions of management.
However, a complete absence of complaints from
the workforce may indicate a atmosphere of fear or
uncertainty. A workforce that is competent and confi dent
of management’s ability to respond positively to issues
raised will result from a positive culture.
Managers need to analyse the levels and nature of
complaints with some caution in order to get a feel as to
whether they are a positive or negative indicator.
4.3.6 Output quality
In organisations that produce either goods or services,
quality of the output is fundamental to business success.
Poor output quality can be indicative of a poor safety
quality. If poor output quality demonstrates low levels of
management control, and if quality control management
is poor, it is likely that management is poor across the
organisation thus having a direct bearing upon safety.
Poor management will adversely affect employees’
motivation. Employees that are not motivated are likely
to take less care of the outputs from their work and so
the cycle continues.
4.3.7 Staff involvement
The degree to which staff are willing to become involved
in non-core or social aspects of the work may provide
management with a useful insight into the state of
workplace culture. Among the activities for which quantitative
data can be made available are:
➤ Suggestion schemes
➤ Work committees
➤ Social activities
➤ Response to attitude surveys.
4.4 How to assist in the development of
a positive safety culture within an
organisation
While the guidance contained in current fi re safety documentation
is a little sparse on fi re safety culture, the HSE
describe in their guidance document HSG65 – ‘Effective
health and safety management’ that there are four building
blocks to an effective safety culture. The blocks are
often classifi ed as the ‘four Cs’ of control, cooperation,
communication and competence. The following sections
discuss these four Cs:
➤ Control – the methods by which an organisation
controls its safety performance
Safety culture
➤ Cooperation – the means that an organisation will
secure the cooperation between individuals, safety
representatives and groups
➤ Communication – the methods by which the organisation
will communicate in, through and out of, the
organisation
➤ Competence – the means by which the organisation
manages the competency levels of individuals and
teams.
4.4.1 Control
Establishing and maintaining control is fundamental to
all management activities.
Control over safety management starts by allocating
clear and unequivocal roles and responsibilities throughout
an organisation. The roles and responsibilities will
be formalised in the safety policy (see Chapter 2) and
will enable all those with responsibilities to be clear as
to what is expected of them, together with the level of
resources at their disposal and the degree of authority
they have to act and/or make decisions.
In addition to allocating clear roles and responsibilities,
it is equally important to ensure that individuals and
teams are made accountable for their performance. This
is not to say that there need be an inappropriate level
of oppressive monitoring or supervision, but rather a
system whereby the individuals are aware that they will
be required to account for the way in which they have
discharged their responsibilities.
Without ensuring individuals are accountable for their
action the exercise of allocating roles and responsibilities
is merely academic. Management systems that are used
to ensure individual and team safety accountabilities
include:
➤ Written job description that contains reference to
safety responsibilities and objectives
➤ Job appraisal and performance review systems that
measure and reward good safety performance
➤ Systems that deal with failures and that identify a
range of actions that can be taken to rectify the failures.
(This is often achieved through the normal discipline
arrangements of the organisation.)
Once roles, responsibilities and accountabilities have
been established, it is then necessary to set some key
safety objectives both for the organisation as a whole,
and where appropriate for individual members of staff.
For example, a company may wish to adopt a measured
reduction of unwanted fi re alarm actuations and may do
so by linking the reduction of false alarms to a maintenance
engineer’s bonus pay scheme.
Safety objectives need to be ‘SMART’ and
supported by plans that will identify both key milestones
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