Creating an Effective Safety Culture and Safety Climate: What It Requires from the SMS, Management, and Personnel

Strong safety culture is co-created. And contrary to common belief, it does not reduce efficiency. Instead, strong safety culture reduces rework, minimizes unplanned downtime and improves decision quality under pressure.

Introduction: Safety Is a System, Culture Is the Outcome

Every shipping company today has a Safety Management System (SMS) and for the most of them, the SMS complies with the ISM Code on paper. Much fewer companies however, can demonstrate a mature safety culture in practice.

Accident investigations and regulatory guidance consistently demonstrate that while many companies hold ISM-compliant safety management systems, effective implementation and a mature safety culture are often lacking. (IMO MSC-MEPC.7/Circ.6; MAIB Annual Reports; HSE)

Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) for example, repeatedly states that even though vessels held a valid DOC and SMC, accidents still happened due to poor safety culture and ineffective management oversight. MAIB annual reports - GOV.UK

An effective safety culture is not created by policies alone. Safety culture results from the alignment of the Safety Management System (SMS), management behavior and leadership, and the engagement and competence of personnel. This article explains what safety culture and safety climate truly mean, what they require from each level of the organization, and why companies that invest in them consistently outperform those that focus on compliance alone.

Safety Culture vs. Safety Climate: Understanding the Difference

Although often used interchangeably, safety culture and safety climate are distinct but closely related concepts. Safety culture, originally defined and popularized by James Reason in his book “Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents (1997)” refers to the embedded values, beliefs, and assumptions about safety that exist within an organization. It is long-term, slow to change and shaped by leadership decisions and organizational history.

Safety culture answers the question:

“How do we really do things here when it comes to safety?”

Safety climate, originally introduced by Dov Zohar in his publication “Safety Climate in Industrial Organizations: Theoretical and Applied Implications (1980)” refers to employees’ shared perception of the priority of safety in their organization, meaning that it reflects the current attitudes of the employees towards safety.

Safety climate can be measured through surveys and interviews of personnel. While safety climate can be sensitive to recent events, it can still be useful indicator of company’s cultural health. One could argue that safety climate is the visible surface of company’s safety culture.

What an Effective Safety Culture Requires from the SMS

The ISM Code provides a strong structural foundation for safety culture. Nevertheless, if the human factor gets neglected, structural foundation will be all you get. Achieving actual safe operations and safe, well-functioning and well implemented safety system, that supports the development of company’s safety culture, the human factor must be considered.

IMO guidance repeatedly emphasizes that SMS documentation should be relevant to operations, proportional to risk and understood by those who use it (ISM Code, §1.2; IMO MSC-MEPC.7/Circ.8). This means that SMS must be clear, practical and purpose driven. Excessively bureaucratic or generic procedures tend to encourage workarounds rather than applying them, which will eventually lead to deteriorating safety culture in the company.

To summarize, company’s safety management system should serve the daily operations in a way that it’s actively being used for example risk-assessments, toolbox talks, and for incident and near-miss reporting and learning from them.

What Safety Culture Requires from Management

Empirical research in high-risk industries shows that management behavior and perceived leadership commitment to safety are the strongest predictors of safety culture and safety-related performance (Zohar, 2000; Neal & Griffin, 2006; Reason, 1997).

Hence, if you wish to develop actual safety culture on your company, you must consider the management’s commitment first. What is being rewarded? What is being tolerated? What is being prioritized by the management?

Effective leaders participate in safety reviews, ask safety-focused questions, allocate time and resources to safety improvements, and accept operational delays when safety is at stake. If the crew observes that schedule adherence, cost savings, or charter pressure are consistently prioritized over safe operation, safety policies lose credibility regardless of the wording.

Management should actively demonstrate that speaking up is valued, even when it is inconvenient. Personnel must feel safe to stop unsafe work, challenge decisions and report concerns without fear of retaliation.

One of the key elements of effective safety culture is to create environment focused on learning, not on blaming and therefore management should clearly separate human error from negligence or willful violations for example.

Environment focused on learning instead of blaming creates strong safety culture, which is often associated with fewer injuries, fewer serious incidents and reduced environmental events.

What Safety Culture Requires from Personnel

Safety culture cannot be built solely by the management’s decision and commitment. Safety culture must be co-created, not imposed. Crew and personnel must commit to implementing and maintaining the safety culture as well. Committing to continuous learning, improving situational awareness, risk recognition skills, and abilities to make decisions under uncertainty are some of the characteristics that crew should be focusing on.

Competence builds confidence, and confidence supports safe behavior.

When safety culture in the company is strong, personnel often see safety as a part of professionalism. They intervene when they observe unsafe practices. They contribute to risk-assessments and work planning, and they ask for work-permits and PPE’s before starting the job. They also report when they notice something possibly dangerous developing and they are not afraid to tell if they encounter near-misses.

When safety culture is strong, the crew trusts the system!

Key Characteristics of a Strong Safety Culture

Organizations with mature safety cultures typically demonstrate high reporting rates, especially of near-misses, low normalization of deviance, constructive response to incidents and strong learning mechanisms.

You can also see consistency between policy and practice and shared understanding of risks. These characteristics are repeatedly being observed in high-reliability organizations (HROs) across maritime, aviation, nuclear, and offshore industries. (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007)

The Advantages of a Strong Safety Culture

Investing in safety culture can deliver measurable benefits beyond compliance.

Companies with strong safety culture often show:

• Lower numbers of accidents and incidents

• Improved regulatory performance

• Operational reliability and efficiency

• Better reputation and crew retention

Strong safety culture is often associated with fewer injuries, fewer serious incidents and reduced environmental events. Furthermore, companies with mature safety cultures typically perform better in PSC inspections, audits and Classification Societies’ oversight.

Contrary to common belief, safety culture does not reduce efficiency. Instead, it reduces rework, minimizes unplanned downtime and improves decision quality under pressure. A strong safety culture also enhances employer attractiveness and crew retention and it builds trust with charterers and regulators.

Strong safety culture emerges when SMS is implemented and properly used to support daily operations, managements' behavior aligns with the values stated in the policies and the crew is committed to continuous learning.

Conclusion: Safety Culture Is the Real Test of an SMS

A compliant SMS is a good starting point, but it shouldn’t be the end goal. Every shipping company should strive for a strong, effective safety culture. It will start to emerge once the SMS really supports actual operations, management behavior undoubtedly aligns with stated values, and when personnel are competent, engaged, and they are being heard.

In the end, auditors assess documents, but incidents and the true feelings of the crew reveal the culture. Companies that understand this distinction move beyond compliance and build systems that genuinely protect their people, their assets, and the environment.