Introduction to Fire Safety Management

4.7.4 Employee 
representation
The degree and quality of both the formal and informal 
representation that employees have in the workforce 
can greatly infl uence safety standards. At one end of 
the scale, a workforce that refl ects management’s posi-
tive and consistent commitment to safety standards will 
be motivated and empowered to infl uence day-to-day 
decisions that affect safety. They will also be involved in 
longer-term decision making regarding the development 
of the business in terms of product and market innov-
ations and improvements to production and safety.
Figure 4.10
Pressure of work has led to failures in safety 
management systems

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Safety culture
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Employees who believe themselves to be an integral 
part of the decision-making processes at work feel 
motivated to safety standards and contribute in often 
quite unexpected ways that have a positive impact 
on safety standards. In contrast a workforce that feels 
disconnected with management and develops a feeling 
that their views are of little value can very easily adopt a 
cynical approach to safety which results in a massively 
negative impact on safety standards.
This is a rather simplifi ed view of the cause and effect 
of human behaviour on the safety standards of organisa-
tions. The full picture is somewhat more complex, and 
the next section discusses human behaviour in terms of 
what it is, how it can affect safety in the workplace and 
how knowledge of how humans behave at work can be 
used to improve safety standards.
4.8
Human behaviour
In attempting to understand how individuals may behave 
in the workplace, it is important to consider what is 
termed ‘human factors’. An understanding of human fac-
tors will enable organisations to understand and manage 
the effects that humans have upon risk control systems.
The safety of the employees will always depend, to 
a greater or lesser degree, on their own skill and ability 
to work ‘safely’, based on their training, knowledge and 
experience. Under normal conditions, the competence of 
individuals makes an essential contribution to workplace 
safety. The knowledge, experience and training are 
often of even greater importance if events take an 
unexpected turn.
The acceptance of safety issues by people at work, 
and therefore their contribution to them, depends on the 
importance placed on safety by the organisation and all 
of the people within it.
A number of factors affect and impact upon human 
behaviour in the workplace. The most important of these 
factors relate to the organisation in which the individual 
works, the job being done and the person undertaking 
the work.
The relationship between the individual, the job they 
perform and the organisation in which they work is both 
complex and interrelated. An effective safety culture is 
one that recognises and manages these interdepend-
ent spheres of infl uence and manages the interfaces 
between work and:
➤
The organisational characteristics which have an 
infl uence on safety-related behaviour at work
➤
The 
infl uence of equipment and system design on 
human performance
➤
The perceptual, mental and physical abilities of 
people and the interaction between them and their 
job and working environment.