In 2012, the French National Railway Company (SNCF) designed, with the help of Ergomanagement, a human factors training programme for managers aimed at strengthening the safety culture. This programme complemented a dedicated... [ view full abstract ]
In 2012, the French National Railway Company (SNCF) designed, with the help of Ergomanagement, a human factors training programme for managers aimed at strengthening the safety culture. This programme complemented a dedicated non-technical skills training course for front-line workers (Duvenci-Langa, Karsenty & Salomé-Martin, 2013)*.
Safety culture is "the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety” (Cox and Cox, 1991)**. More specifically, “organizations with a positive safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures" (ACSNI, 1993)***. Based on these definitions, the main objectives of the human factors training programme were to encourage managers to adopt the necessary new attitudes, beliefs and perceptions to build or reinforce trust relationships, promote incident reporting and a deep analysis of errors and violations, and adopt relevant and timely measures to improve safety including, when necessary, just decisions on sanctions. To date, approximately 350 general and safety managers and 400 local managers from 17 regions of France have attended the training workshops.
In this paper, we review the topics covered during the training workshops and explain how they were arranged. An evaluation methodology of their outcomes is then presented. It has been applied to a subset of the managers, namely those who belonged to two sites where (almost) all managers and operators attended the training programme. The main outcomes are presented in two parts. The first focuses on the immediate outcomes of the workshops (participants’ satisfaction rates, adherence to key posts, commitments). The second presents the outcomes after a period of 6 to 12 months. It shows that positive changes were obtained among a number of managers, but not all. These changes includes a better assessment of the organizational factors causing incidents, better support for front-line operators and more timely responses to safety concerns, stronger involvement in incident analysis, a willingness to fully understand the circumstances of an incident before adopting a sanction and the refusal of feedback from experience that emphasizes only the operator’s role in an incident. Obstacles that prevented broader change are also identified, and improvements to the training programme proposed.
*Duvenci-Langa, S., Karsenty, L. & Salomé-Martin, S. (2013). Consideration of human factors in developing rail safety skills. Proceedings of the 2nd UIC World Congress on Rail Training (WCRT'2013), Vienna, 24-26 April 2013 (in french).
**Cox, S. & Cox, T. (1991). The structure of employee attitudes to safety - a European example. Work and Stress, 5, 93 - 106.
***Advisory Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (1993). ACSNI study group on human factors. Third report. Organising for safety, London: Health and Safety Executive.
