The SAFETEE Culture Model is our counter-proposal to the Bradley Curve: safety culture is not a stage an organisation reaches but the result of conditions in which situations arise and people work. We find the role models in your operation and train them as safety culture multipliers – from heteronomy to self-determination.
The SAFETEE Culture Model describes safety culture as the development of people within corporate and legal requirements – not as a maturity stage of the organisation. The first level holds the individual preconditions: qualification, education, instincts and intuition. On the second level, individual development, the weight shifts from heteronomy (supervision, training, qualification) to self-determination through knowledge transfer. On the third level the person becomes a safety culture multiplier: a role model who passes on safety knowledge. With every level the possible range of injury risk shrinks.
Everyone brings skills: qualification, education, instincts, intuition. This level is undefined – the organisation often does not know it. Knowledge transfer runs empirically, from colleague to colleague.
The company defines requirements, instructs, trains, qualifies – heteronomy. With every understood why, self-determination grows: the person works safely because they want to, not because someone is watching.
The role models in the operation are recognised and trained. They pass on safety knowledge, help shape the conditions and carry the culture to new colleagues.
The Bradley Curve places organisations on a ladder of stages and promises falling accident rates with rising maturity. The SAFETEE Culture Model starts one level deeper – with the conditions under which people work:
We use the Bradley Curve as a conversation piece when clients know it. For work on site the model is more useful because it says where to start: with conditions and people, not with a stage.
Rules, releases, operating instructions: what the company defines determines what employees may do – and what they have to work out for themselves.
Deadline pressure, missing tools, too few people: the most frequent cause of risky behaviour is a situation, not an attitude.
Heteronomy is right at the beginning. But it must turn into understanding, otherwise safe behaviour stays tied to supervision.
How leadership responds to deviations decides whether knowledge is passed on or hidden.
In every operation there are people who work safely because they want to. They are the core of the culture – if you recognise them.
Empirical, formal, safety-related: the paths knowledge travels in the company decide how fast the culture grows.
The model is the map, the programme the path. This is how we implement it with you – usually combined with Behaviour Based Safety and the SAFETEE Compass:
Corporate and legal requirements, situations, time, equipment, leadership: where do risky situations arise – independent of persons?
Who works safely because they want to? Observation, conversations with management and workforce, no nomination from above.
Training of the role models: give feedback, pass on knowledge, induct new colleagues, help shape conditions.
Multipliers involved in instruction, induction and site walks; evaluation of knowledge transfer and self-determination.
Culture is not decreed, it is copied. A role model in the crew works more strongly than any campaign – because it shows that safe work is possible under real conditions. Multipliers carry the culture to people a manager never reaches.
The SAFETEE Culture Model is a practice model from our projects, not a validated theory. It replaces neither risk assessment nor technical safety. What it delivers: it says where culture work starts – and provides quantities that can be observed.
From the SAFETEE Culture Model – per level its state, the ratio of heteronomy and self-determination and the type of knowledge transfer:
The way to safety culture excellence leads through all three levels; with every level the possible range of injury risk shrinks. The goal is not zero risk but people who want to work safely – and take others with them.
The SAFETEE Culture Model is part of our Safety Consulting. These building blocks interlock:
A practice model for safety culture that SAFETEE developed from its projects. It describes three levels – individual preconditions, individual development, safety culture multiplier – within corporate and legal requirements. The core: culture arises in situations the company shapes and grows through role models who pass on safety knowledge.
The Bradley Curve places the organisation on a linear ladder of stages and measures maturity by the accident rate. The SAFETEE Culture Model looks at people in their conditions, describes the path from heteronomy to self-determination per person and relies on role models as multipliers. It promises no curve but names levers: conditions, knowledge transfer, multipliers.
A colleague who works safely because they want to – and passes that knowledge on. We recognise these role models in the operation, train them (feedback, induction, knowledge transfer, shaping conditions) and involve them in instruction, site walks and induction. Multipliers are not safety officers in the legal sense but can be the same people.
No – it is a practice model, which we openly call it. It takes up insights from HOP and Safety-II (context drives behaviour, work succeeds through adjustment) and turns them into a structure that can be observed on site: share of self-determination, number and effect of multipliers, paths of knowledge transfer.
First role models are identified and trained within a few weeks after the analysis. Their effect becomes noticeable when they are firmly involved in induction and site walks – usually after six to twelve months, depending on company size and turnover. We measure that with leading indicators, not the accident rate.
Yes, it is the basis of our BBS approach: BBS delivers observation and feedback, the model says what they aim at – improve conditions, foster self-determination, train multipliers. The SAFETEE Compass adds the fair classification of deficiencies.
Industry, company size, starting point: with three details we tell you what analysis and multiplier programme look like – and get back to you within one working day.
