Introduction to Fire Safety Management

4.5
Factors promoting a negative 
culture
It can be safely assumed that the absence of all the fac-
tors discussed above (see section 4.3) will promote a 
negative safety culture. If an organisation fails to provide 
a working environment that nurtures a positive culture it 
will have a direct impact upon the organisation and the 
employees.
The factors that promote a negative safety culture 
include:
➤
Management behaviour and decision making
➤
Staff feeling undervalued
➤
Job 
demands
➤
Role 
ambiguity.
People respond to a negative work culture 
in a number of ways, some will become 
cynical and ambivalent towards work, others 
will seek to want to deliberately sabotage the 
organisation’s plans. A common outcome of 
a negative culture is individual work-related 
stress. If stress is intense and goes on for 
some time it can lead to mental and physi-
cal ill health, i.e. depression, nervous break-
down, heart disease.
4.5.1 Management behaviour and decision 
making
The behaviour of managers at work has a massive 
impact on their subordinates. The impact is far greater 
than many managers may realise and it sends strong 
messages to the staff as to how they ought to behave. 
Examples of management behaviour that have a nega-
tive impact on the safety culture of an organisation are:
➤
Failure to follow or deal with non-compliance of 
safety rules:
➤
Blocking or obstructing escape routes
➤
Not wearing PPE
➤
Not using safety guards
➤
Moving 
extinguishers
➤
Not evacuating during an excercise.
In addition to the physical behaviour of managers, the 
way that staff feel about safety will be adversely infl u-
enced by management decisions that demonstrate that 
safety is not a high priority. This is even more dam-
aging if the organisation has a good safety policy in place 
as it not only undermines the safety culture but it indi-
cates that management do not consider their own 
policies important.