Safety culture

"Just Culture" is a prerequisite for a functioning safety culture. Just Culture creates an atmosphere of trust in which employees are encouraged to report safety-relevant events and pass on information (reporting culture). This information enables an organisation to identify safety problems in the system (informed / adaptive organisation) and to initiate targeted improvement measures to increase safety (learning culture).

2. Reporting culture

4. Adaptive organisation

3. Informed organisation

1. Just Culture

5. Learning culture

Concept of safety culture

A mature safety culture, as it exists in aviation, is composed of the following parts:

safety culture

1. Just Culture

A culture of trust in which employees are encouraged to report safety incidents and share information. Just Culture can be considered an essential element of a functioning safety culture.

2. Reporting culture - Reporting incidents

Employees report safety-relevant incidents. Such a reporting culture develops from a well-established Just Culture.

3. Informed organisation - Knowledge about it in the organisation

The organisation has up-to-date knowledge about ongoing safety-relevant issues or problems. It obtains this knowledge from a functioning and accepted reporting culture.

4. Adaptive organisation - Rapid response

The organisation can adapt to changing requirements and enables quick and smooth response to undesirable events.

5. Learning culture - Continuous learning from incidents

Conclusions are drawn from existing safety-related information in order to learn and improve. This learning is made possible by the knowledge described above and the honest handling of reported safety-relevant incidents.

Source: Adapted from Reason's model (1997)