Safety climate and its measurement

Safety climate and prevention culture: differences

Prevention culture includes the values, assumptions and ways of acting established within an organisation. Climate focuses on how the group perceives safety policies, procedures and practices at a particular time.

The definition from NFA, Denmark’s research centre for the working environment, encompasses both management and the team itself. It is not limited to individual satisfaction or knowledge of rules. Different sites or shifts may perceive different priorities within one company.

What measurement can reveal

A survey can reveal differences between what management believes it promotes and what people experience: whether reporting a problem receives support, shortcuts are accepted to meet deadlines or colleagues trust each other’s ability to work safely.

These results help formulate questions and prioritise conversations. They do not by themselves establish an accident’s cause or replace inspections, risk assessment or psychosocial assessment. A favourable perception does not demonstrate that a facility is technically safe.

What NOSACQ-50 measures

NOSACQ-50 was developed by a Nordic researcher network. It contains 50 items across seven dimensions:

1. Management safety priority, commitment and competence.
2. Management promotion of participation and empowerment.
3. Management justice in safety matters.
4. The team’s commitment to safety.
5. The team’s safety priority and non-acceptance of risk.
6. Communication, learning and trust in colleagues’ competence.
7. Trust in the effectiveness of safety systems.

Use an appropriate language version and follow the instrument’s instructions. Changing questions or scales without a sound basis can prevent valid comparison of results.

How to prepare the survey with safeguards

Before collecting responses, explain the purpose, who will process data, what will be published and how improvements will be decided. Define analysis groups without allowing identification through shift, role or other characteristics.

NFA’s ethical guidance highlights voluntary participation, participant information and caution with small groups. The company must enable responses without managerial pressure and check participation by less visible groups. A high response rate does not guarantee representativeness if an entire shift is missing.

Interpret without turning results into a grade

According to NFA’s interpretation guidance, results express perceptions, not necessarily actual conditions. The scale uses values from 1 to 4; dimension-specific guidance must be read alongside context, participation and response dispersion.

Internal comparisons and comparisons with similar studies require sufficiently comparable groups. The international database is not a representative sample of all companies. Avoid turning an average into a maturity certificate, making punitive rankings of managers or claiming that a small change proves general improvement.

From results to observable actions

The team must receive understandable feedback and be able to explain specific situations behind the answers. Select a few actions with owners and follow-up: respond to pending reports, review production priorities or improve shift communication.

Preventive indicators can show whether these actions are implemented. Repeating the survey under comparable conditions can reveal trends, but workforce, task and contextual changes must be considered. Its value lies in learning and action, not raising a score through messages that influence responses.