Introduction to Fire Safety Management

Introduction to Fire Safety Management
objectives are met or when accidents are avoided by the
personal intervention of a conscientious member of staff.
4.5.3 Job demands
An organisation promoting a negative culture will impose
unrealistic and unnecessary job demands on the workforce,
in particular poor organisations will fail to:
➤ Prioritise tasks
➤ Cut out unnecessary work
➤ Try to give warning of urgent or important jobs
➤ Ensure that individuals are matched to jobs
➤ Provide training for those who need it
➤ Increase the scope of jobs for those who are
overtrained
➤ Ensure workplace hazards, such as fi re, noise,
harmful substances and the threat of violence, are
properly controlled
➤ Allow staff to control any aspects of their own work
or make decisions about how that work should be
completed and how problems should be tackled.
4.5.4 Role ambiguity
Role ambiguity is experience by individuals who are
uncertain of their work roles and responsibilities. People
will often fi nd themselves in the situation where they
do not know what they are supposed to be doing and
feel ill equipped to do what they think may be expected.
Organisations will create role ambiguity by ill-defi ned job
descriptions in order to cover all possible eventualities.
This has the benefi t, for the negative organisation, of
being able to identify and blame individuals for a broad
range of failures.
Role ambiguity has been proven to be a signifi -
cant cause of work-related stress with all of the serious
72
Legal
Stakeholder
expectations
Figure 4.9 External infl uences on safety culture
Safety culture
consequences of chronic mental ill health for the sufferers.
Specifi c factors that lead to role ambiguity among
the workforce are the lack of:
➤ Clearly written and communicated policies, supported
by clear and realistic job descriptions
➤ Proper supervisory support
➤ Adequate training and supervision for the job holder
➤ Adequate performance review.
4.6 External infl uences on safety culture
No organisation operates in isolation. Despite all the
good intents and actions of management, the safety culture
of organisations is infl uenced signifi cantly by external
forces which are, in the main, outside the control of
management.
It is true to say that safety culture cannot be
separated from the wider culture of an effectively
managed business or operation, and that a reliable view
of it should not focus on safety alone but rather on the
delivery of the business objectives as a whole, including
those for quality and service delivery.
Key among the external infl uences impacting on the
safety culture are:
➤ Legal
➤ Economical
➤ Stakeholder expectations
➤ Technical.
4.6.1 Legal
The legal framework within which organisations manage
safety issues should have a signifi cant positive impact
Economical
Technical