| dc.description.abstract | To promote the systems approach toward occupational health and safety management, OHSAS 18001 was introduced to Taiwan in early 2000. The management system approach was further enhanced by the Council of Labor Affairs’ promulgation of Taiwan Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems guidelines in 2008. There are now more than 700 organizations having their OHSAS 18001 and the Taiwan Occupational Safety and Health Management System certified. However, most of the organizations implementing these management systems fail to realize the ultimate goal of nurturing a positive safety culture.
To assist organizations achieving a positive safety culture, this study adopts the Safety Culture Maturity Model, SCMM, proposed by the Health and Safety Executive of UK. This is based on the rationale that most organizations with OHSAS 18001 or equivalent management systems in Taiwan, although with varying degrees of maturity of the management systems, are qualified to seriously consider relevant issues of safety culture. In addition, the stage-wise approach of SCMM, dividing the maturity levels into Emerging, Managing, Involving, Cooperating and Continually Improving, is progressive in nature and sets clear improvement goals for each level. Realizing the deficits of Taiwanese organizations’ occupational safety and health practices, the influencing factors of safety culture presented in the literature are reduced to five factors of management commitment, communication, employee participation, training and learning organization.
Simple questionnaire, based on the tools used to survey and improve culture maturity level of an organization and improvements needed to reach the next level are presented in this study. For simplicity, the improvement plans consider only management commitment and employee participation. It is hoped that the implementation strategy proposed in this study will pave the way for successful development of safety culture in Taiwan.
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