Health and Safety Culture Flashcards
7 cards from real HSE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Health and Safety Culture flashcards as text
During a post-incident investigation, focusing primarily on 'root causes' rather than 'blame' supports which cultural principle?
Answer: Learning culture and systemic improvement
A learning culture uses incident investigations to uncover systemic failures and improve processes rather than simply assigning individual fault.
Which of the following is an example of 'safety citizenship behavior'?
Answer: Voluntarily helping a coworker identify and correct a hazard without being asked
Safety citizenship behaviors are discretionary, voluntary actions beyond formal requirements that contribute to collective safety, such as proactively assisting colleagues.
When management responds to a safety concern by saying 'we've always done it this way,' this most likely indicates:
Answer: Cultural resistance to change and potential complacency
'We've always done it this way' is a warning sign of complacency and resistance to improvement, which can allow hazards to persist unaddressed.
The primary purpose of a 'safety charter' or safety commitment statement signed by leadership is to:
Answer: Visibly communicate leadership's genuine commitment to safety as a core value
A safety charter publicly signals that leadership treats safety as a genuine organizational value, which influences employee attitudes and behavioral norms.
Which of the following best illustrates a 'safety-first' vs. 'safety-also' organizational philosophy?
Answer: Safety-first: stopping work for any hazard; Safety-also: addressing hazards only after production targets are met
A safety-first organization halts operations when unacceptable hazards arise, while safety-also organizations subordinate safety decisions to production pressures.
According to Reason's 'Swiss Cheese Model,' how does safety culture reduce accident risk?
Answer: By maintaining multiple overlapping defenses so gaps in one are covered by another
Reason's model shows that accidents occur when holes in multiple defensive layers align; strong culture maintains and adds defensive layers to prevent simultaneous alignment.
A company notices that near-miss reports dropped significantly after managers publicly criticized employees for the incidents described in reports. This outcome reflects:
Answer: A chilling effect on reporting due to fear of blame
Negative responses to near-miss reports discourage future reporting, leaving hazards unidentified and undermining the foundation of a learning safety culture.