SAFETY CULTURE

Leadership Safety 

Values and Actions

TRAIT TALK

Trait Talk was developed to provide 

you with a better understanding of the 

nine safety culture traits found in the 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 

(NRC) Safety Culture Policy Statement 

(SCPS) and how they apply to you—

whether you are an NRC employee 

interacting with an external stakeholder, 

an NRC licensee, a vendor or contractor 

employee, an organization interested 

in the safe and secure use of nuclear 

materials, or others involved in nuclear 

safety regulation. Please see page 4 

of Safety Culture Trait Talk for more 

information on the SCPS.

Experience has shown that certain 

personal and organizational traits are 

present in a positive safety culture. 

A trait, in this case, is a pattern of 

thinking, feeling, and behaving that 

emphasizes safety, particularly in goal 

conflict situations, for example, in 

situations where production, schedule, 

or just the cost of effort may conflict 

with doing the job safely. The NRC 

identified nine traits of a positive safety 

culture in the SCPS, although the agency 

recognizes that additional traits may also 

be important. In addition, please note 

that the traits were not developed to be 

used for inspection purposes.

Each Trait Talk includes a fictional 

scenario based on a different 

licensee or community. The scenario 

used in this Trait Talk is based on the 

reactor community. 

As you read through Trait Talk, consider 

the following questions: 

1. How does this trait apply to my 

organization? 

2. Are there other attributes and 

examples that better fit my 

organization? 

3. What impact does this trait have on 

the safety culture in my organization? 

4. How does this increase my 

understanding of the safety culture in 

my organization? 

5. How could I improve the performance 

of this trait in my organization?

What Is The Definition Of Leadership Safety 

Values And Actions? 

The NRC’s SCPS defines Leadership Safety Values and Actions as when leaders demonstrate 

a commitment to safety in their decisions and behaviors.

Why Is This Trait Important?

Leaders perform essential functions in organizations. The quality and actions of 

leadership have widespread consequences for an organization’s safety culture and its 

performance. Leaders have significant power to affect an organization’s safety culture 

through the priorities they establish, the behaviors and values they model, the reward 

systems they administer, the trust they create, and the context and expectations 

they establish for interpersonal relationships, communication, and accountability. 

Leaders also exert significant influence on change initiatives. They have the power 

and responsibility to set strategy and direction, align people and resources, motivate 

and inspire people, and ensure that problems are identified and solved in a timely 

manner. A lack of commitment or clear communication about what is important to 

the organization can create a conflict for employees who must then decide between 

competing messages. This leads employees to their own interpretations, thereby 

potentially negatively affecting the organization’s safety culture. It is clear that behavior 

matters and leadership behaviors that support a positive safety culture are critical. 

Leaders at all levels play an important role in establishing the organization’s 

environment and safety culture. This is evident in the manner in which competing 

goals that occur at every level of the organization are managed. There may be 

conflicting demands from a cost and schedule perspective versus safety and quality. The 

organization’s members may face these competing goals on a daily basis. These decisions 

may occur at all levels of the organization, not just at the top. Each employee may 

encounter his or her version of these conflicts and will be faced with making decisions 

as he or she engages in activities to resolve them. The organization’s safety culture plays 

a significant role in guiding employee’s decisions; in other words, what they view as the 

organization’s priorities. Is the organization’s priority safety or production? This is one 

of the important junctions where leadership at the top of the organization is critical in 

setting the standards and establishing overarching safety priorities that all employees 

understand take precedence over all competing demands.1

Issue 1 March, 2014

One of the traits of a positive safety culture as described in the U.S. Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission’s Safety Culture Policy Statement.
SAFETY CULTURE TRAIT TALK

WHAT DOES THIS TRAIT LOOK LIKE?

Resources: Leaders ensure that personnel, equipment, 

procedures, and other resources are available and adequate to 

support safety.

Leaders ensure that staffing levels are sufficient and personnel are 

qualified for the work they are performing. Leaders ensure that 

facilities are maintained and tools, equipment, procedures, and 

other resources are readily available to support work performance. 

Finally, leaders ensure that sufficient corporate resources are 

allocated for maintenance, equipment, and personnel to ensure 

safe and reliable operation.

Field Presence: Leaders are commonly seen in working 

areas of the organization observing, coaching, and reinforcing 

standards and expectations. Deviations from standards and 

expectations are corrected promptly.

Leaders ensure sufficient oversight of work activities. They practice 

visible leadership in the field by coaching, mentoring, reinforcing 

standards, and reinforcing positive decisionmaking practices and 

behaviors. Leaders discuss their observations in detail with the 

group they observed and provide useful feedback about how to 

improve individual performance. They model safe behaviors and 

high standards of accountability as a way to encourage others. 

Incentives, Sanctions, and Rewards: Leaders ensure 

incentives, sanctions, and rewards are aligned with safety policies 

and reinforce behaviors and outcomes that reflect safety as the 

overriding priority.

Leaders ensure disciplinary actions are appropriate, consistent, 

and support safety and a safety conscious work environment. 

They reward individuals who identify and raise issues affecting 

safety and praise behaviors that reflect a positive safety culture. 

Leaders foster an environment that promotes accountability and 

hold individuals accountable for their actions. Leaders consider 

potential chilling effects when taking disciplinary actions and 

other personnel actions, and they take compensatory actions when 

appropriate. 

Strategic Commitment to Safety: Leaders ensure 

priorities are aligned to reflect safety as the overriding priority.

Leaders develop and implement cost and schedule goals in a 

manner that reinforces the importance of safety. Information from 

independent oversight organizations is used to help establish priorities 

that align with safety. Leaders establish strategic and business plans 

that reflect safety as the overriding priority and ensure that corporate 

priorities also align with safety priorities.

Change Management: Leaders use a systematic process 

for evaluating and implementing change so that safety remains 

the overriding priority.

Leaders use a systematic process for planning, coordinating, and 

evaluating the safety impacts and potential negative effects on the 

willingness of individuals to raise safety concerns, when making 

major changes. This includes decisions concerning changes to 

organizational structure and functions, leadership, policies, 

programs, procedures, and resources. Leaders ensure safety is 

maintained when planning, communicating, and implementing 

change and ensure that significant unintended consequences 

are avoided. Leaders ensure that individuals understand the 

importance of, and their role in, the change management process.

Roles, Responsibilities, and Authorities: Leaders 

clearly define roles, responsibilities, and authorities to ensure 

safety.

Leaders ensure roles, responsibilities, and authorities of 

executives, senior managers, and corporate managers are clearly 

defined, understood, and documented. They appropriately 

delegate responsibility and authority to promote ownership and 

accountability. Leaders ensure that recommendations from review 

boards and independent oversight organizations do not override 

senior leaders’ ultimate responsibility for decisions affecting safety.

Constant Examination: Leaders ensure that safety 

is constantly scrutinized through a variety of monitoring 

techniques, including assessments of safety culture.

Leaders ensure that board members and members of independent 

oversight organizations meet with different levels of management 

and staff to develop an understanding of the status of the 

organization’s safety culture. They use a variety of monitoring 

tools—including employee surveys, self- and independent 

assessments, external safety review board member feedback, and 

employee concern investigations—to regularly monitor safety 

culture. Leaders support and participate in candid assessments of 

workplace attitudes and safety culture and act on issues that affect 

trust in management and detract from a healthy safety culture.

Leader Behaviors: Leaders exhibit behaviors that set the 

standard for safety. 

Leaders “walk the talk,” modeling correct behaviors, especially 

when resolving apparent conflicts between safety and production. 

They act promptly when a safety issue is raised to ensure it is 

understood and appropriately addressed. Leaders maintain high 

standards of personal conduct that promote all aspects of a positive 

safety culture, and actively seek out the opinions and concerns 

of workers at all levels. Leaders encourage personnel to challenge 

unsafe behavior and unsafe conditions, and motivate others to 

practice positive safety culture behaviors.2

2 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission
SAFETY CULTURE TRAIT TALK

WHAT IS A SCENARIO IN WHICH THIS 

TRAIT COULD PLAY A ROLE?

Senior management at a nuclear power plant developed a new 

incentive program after noticing substantial schedule delays 

during outages at the plant. The incentive program included 

bonuses for meeting schedule goals during outages. During an 

outage, a supervisor signed off on work without completing 

an independent verification, which was not required but 

recommended by procedure. The supervisor made this decision 

because there were no qualified workers available at the time 

and waiting for the next shift of workers would have caused 

a schedule slip, affecting the potential outage bonus. The 

supervisor defended the decision to management by stating that 

a peer check was completed, and considered sufficient to verify 

the work performed. 

Over time, peer checks were substituted for a number of 

independent verifications during outages because it saved 

time, helped the team stay on-schedule, and resulted in larger 

bonuses at the end of the outage. After several years of this 

practice, a short in a breaker that was replaced during an 

outage inadvertently caused a loss of power to an entire train of 

equipment, which then caused a reactor trip. One of the primary 

cooling pumps on the active train was out of service at the time 

of the loss of power. It had been scheduled for repair during 

the outage but was rescheduled because waiting for the parts to 

repair the pump would have extended the outage. As a result, the 

plant had to rely on emergency systems to cool the reactor core 

because both of the primary cooling pumps were unavailable. 

The root cause analysis of the event found that an independent 

verification of the breaker replacement was not completed 

because common practice had been to accept a peer check as 

adequate verification of the work performed. Management’s 

focus on meeting schedule goals, and acceptance of peer checks 

in place of recommended independent verifications, contributed 

to a reactor trip that challenged the plant’s safety systems.3

Thinking about the scenario discussed above, consider the 

following questions:

1. How does this scenario apply to the safety culture 

trait of Leadership Safety Values and Actions?

2. What kinds of leadership behaviors would have 

reinforced safety as the overriding priority?

3. How could management have handled this 

situation differently?

WHO CAN I CONTACT WITH A 

QUESTION OR SUGGESTION?

The NRC looks forward to continuing to provide you with 

information about the traits of a positive safety culture. If you 

have a question or would like to make a suggestion, please 

contact the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of 

Enforcement, Safety Culture Team, at external_safety_culture.

resource@nrc.gov.

Issue 1, March 2014 3

Sources of Information:

1 “Why is this trait important?” was derived, in part, from 

a literature review (Agencywide Documents Access 

and Management System (ADAMS) Accession No. 

ML13023A054) prepared by Pacific Northwest National 

Laboratories for the NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory 

Research. 

2 “What does this trait look like?” was derived from 

the Safety Culture Common Language effort (ADAMS 

Accession No. ML13031A343), under the direction of 

the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. Panelists 

from the NRC, nuclear power industry, and the public 

created attributes of a positive nuclear safety culture, 

and examples of each attribute that a nuclear power 

organization should demonstrate in maintaining a 

positive safety culture. Although these attributes and 

examples were created specifically for the reactor 

community, they may also be applicable to various 

other communities and organizations. For purposes 

of Trait Talk, the examples were partially rewritten to 

increase applicability to nuclear as well as non nuclear 

communities. 

3 “What is a scenario in which this trait played a role?” 

was developed specifically for Safety Culture Trait Talk 

for educational purposes only. The scenario is fictional 

and any resemblance to actual events, people, or 

organizations is purely coincidental.
SAFETY CULTURE TRAIT TALK

4 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The NRC’s SCPS provides the NRC’s expectation that 

individuals and organizations performing regulated 

activities establish and maintain a positive safety culture 

commensurate with the safety and security significance 

of their activities and the nature and complexity of 

their organizations and functions. Because safety and 

security are the primary pillars of the NRC’s regulatory 

mission, consideration of both safety and security issues, 

commensurate with their significance, is an underlying 

principle of the SCPS.

The NRC’s SCPS applies to all licensees, certificate holders, 

permit holders, authorization holders, holders of quality 

assurance program approvals, vendors and suppliers of 

safety-related components, and applicants for a license, 

certificate permit, authorization, or quality assurance 

program approval subject to NRC authority. In addition, 

the Commission encourages the Agreement States (States 

that assume regulatory authority over their own use 

of certain nuclear materials), their licensees, and other 

organizations interested in nuclear safety to support the 

development and maintenance of a positive safety culture 

within their regulated communities. The SCPS is not a 

regulation; therefore, it is the organization’s responsibility, as 

part of its safety culture program, to consider how to apply 

the SCPS to its regulated activities.

The NRC’s SCPS, which includes the definition of nuclear 

safety culture and the nine traits of a positive safety culture, 

can be found on the NRC’s Safety Culture Web site. The 

Web site includes additional safety culture information, as 

well as the NRC safety culture case studies, which describe 

how the presence or absence of safety culture traits affects 

the outcome of the events. 

WHAT IS THE NRC’S SAFETY CULTURE POLICY STATEMENT?

There are many definitions of safety culture. Most of these definitions focus on the idea that in a positive safety culture 

individuals and organizations emphasize safety over competing goals, such as production or costs, ensuring a safety-first focus. 

The NRC’s SCPS defines nuclear safety culture as the core values and behaviors resulting from a collective commitment 

by leaders and individuals to emphasize safety over competing goals to ensure protection of people and the environment.

Experience has shown that certain personal and organizational traits are present in a positive safety culture. The following traits 

were included in the NRC’s SCPS, although additional traits may also be important in a positive safety culture.

Leadership Safety Values

and Actions

Problem Identification 

and Resolution Personal Accountability

Leaders demonstrate a 

commitment to safety in 

their decisions and behaviors.

Issues potentially impacting 

safety are promptly identified, 

fully evaluated, and promptly 

addressed and corrected 

commensurate with 

their significance.

All individuals take personal

responsibility for safety.

Work Processes Continuous Learning Environment for 

Raising Concerns

The process of planning and 

controlling work activities is 

implemented so that safety 

is maintained. 

Opportunities to learn about ways 

to ensure safety are sought out 

and implemented.

A safety conscious work 

environment is maintained 

where personnel feel free to 

raise safety concerns without 

fear of retaliation, intimidation, 

harassment or discrimination.

Effective Safety 

Communications Respectful Work Environment Questioning Attitude

Communications maintain 

a focus on safety.

Trust and respect permeate the 

organization.

Individuals avoid complacency 

and continually challenge existing 

conditions and activities in 

order to identify discrepancies 

that might result in error or 

inappropriate action.