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Nuclear Safety Culture
Assessment
The culture of most organizations
consists of the shared perceptions, traditions, values,
practices, goals, and socialization processes of an
organization’s dominant group or membership. The cultural
attributes of the dominant group in an organization are what
we perceive to be its overall personality or culture.
The dominant-group perception of an organizations’
personality or culture is adequate for most organizations
but not for nuclear power plants and not for other safety
conscious industries. Since a single person can greatly
influence the safety level achieved at a nuclear power
plant, it is important to include each and every individual
in our concept of culture. This 100 percent cultural
inclusion standard is what makes nuclear safety culture so
difficult to understand and to achieve.
The nuclear plant organizational culture forms over the
years, and the nature of that culture becomes part of its
reputation. The culture, and, thus, reputation can also
change with each change in personnel and each change in
plant management policy. It reflects the management
philosophy, style, attitudes, decision making, and business
strategy.
When considering a plant’s nuclear safety culture, the
culture and plant reputation also reflect each individual
worker’s reactions to management. Thus, it is important to
realize each nuclear plant manager and worker constantly
impacts the culture, the impacted culture becomes the plant
reputation, and the plant reputation either leads to more or
less regulation, which will then impact the business
strategy. The "top-down" approach to nuclear plant
management simply does not have the power to ensure each
manager and worker has the right nuclear safety culture
impacts.
Thus, under traditional management, each individual has the
power to cause a plant to become a nonviable business or, at
least, inefficient and largely dysfunctional. An
organization’s culture becomes of highest concern when it
cause the organization to be dysfunctional relative to its
basic mission. Changes are needed, and additional concurrent
changes may be required when markets and competition change.
Also, an additional set of upgrades or changes may be needed
to improve regulatory compliance, services, and the quality
of service, over and above culture-related changes.
While many people support the cultural notion of worker
importance and are willing to listen to calls to use
bottom-up management to achieve excellence, implementation
is difficult. Each individual must be respected and
empowered, concepts directly contrary to traditional
top-down management thinking. We understand the importance
of bottom-up management, but we continue to try to motivate
workers and create excellence using he easier top-down
methods.
At a nuclear plant, the cultural attributes or
characteristics and requirements for the construction phase
are different from those in the plant testing, startup, and
long-term operational phases. If the appropriate cultural
transformation doesn’t occur between phases, the
organization can become dysfunctional. The operating phase
requires a different management or leadership style.
Some organizations have a "hidden" culture. In
such a culture, the leadership may state one thing in plant
procedures and documentation, but managers or employees
practice something totally different in reality. It is the
responsibility of the CEO and Board of Directors to
establish, monitor, and change the culture of the
organization, including any undesirable "hidden"
culture that may be present.
Safety culture represents the degree to which people in an
organization take responsibility for their actions and the
consequences of them on safety, A good safety culture means
a worker environment where a good safety ethic permeates the
organization from top to bottom and peoples’ behavior
focuses on accident prevention through critical
self-assessment, pro-active identification of management and
technical problems, and effective problem resolution before
they become crises. The basic root causes of safety
problems, particularly at nuclear plants, have often be
tracked back to inappropriate decisions by management.
The culture of an organization is critical to its success
and survival. To grow and be successful, many organizations
have had to change their culture. What worked in the past no
longer does.
MDI helps clients by determining: the threats, strengths and
weaknesses (opportunities for improvement) of their existing
culture. We answer these important questions:
What kind of organizational culture do you currently have?
What kind of organizational culture do you need or want?
What specific actions must be taken in all functional areas
in order to change your organizational and safety culture
from what it is to what you want or need it to be?
What is the evaluation strategy for determining your
progress in making the desired cultural changes?
We also help clients make organizational and nuclear safety
culture improvements through mentoring… teaching and
coaching members of the management team. This mentoring
includes a wide range of important topics such as: promoting
effective communications, identifying and overcoming
obstacles to plant profitability (expediting),
motivating personal excellence, handling regulatory
interface, accountability, accepting ownership of problems,
paying attention to detail, professionalism, conservative
decision making, questioning attitude, delegation of work,
work control and feedback, and reward systems.
MDI will do an audit to record all of the factors that make
up your company’s culture, and then prepare a culture
management plan to get you from where you are to where you
want to be in the shortest time possible.
MDI… your partner in culture transformation and human
performance improvement
Other
Services
Management Diagnostics, Inc.
P.O. Box 240, Port Royal, PA 17082-0240
Tel: 717-527-4399 Fax: 717-527-4398
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