Evaluating Effects of Culture and Language on Safety
Authors: Chunlin Huang , Chengyu Fu , Boben M.E. 
Published: June 2014

This paper (SPE 54448) was revised for publication from paper SPE 48891, prepared for the 1998 SPE International Conference and Exhibition held in Beijing, 2–6 November. Original manuscript received 14 May 1998. This paper has not been peer reviewed.

During the fourth quarter of 1997, Phillips China Inc.(PCI) conducted a safety perception survey on three offshore facilities it operates in the South China Sea. The survey evaluated the work force and its perceived environment, health, and safety (EHS) performance, with emphasis on the influence of the different cultures and languages. Opportunities for improvement were identified, and an action plan was developed and implemented.

Introduction

PCI currently operates two Xijiang offshore oil fields in the South China Sea that produce approximately 100,000 BOPD. Partners in this operation include China Natl. Offshore Oil Corp. and Pecten Orient. Operation facilities include two production platforms and one floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) tanker. Almost 400 offshore employees from more than 10 different countries work on these facilities on 28-day-on/28-day-off rotation shifts. More than half are contractor employees. Cultural and language differences impact EHS success significantly in this global operating environment. Evaluation of workers' perception of safety helps identify improvement areas and potential areas of safety concern.

Survey objectives are to produce a general picture of the safety culture within Xijiang operations by comparing safety perceptions of expatriates with those of Chinese nationals; by identifying the impact that these differences may have on safety; by evaluating the impact that language differences may have on safety; by comparing offshore facilities; by comparing PCI and contractor personnel on the basis of their safety cultures; and by benchmarking PCI's safety culture vs. North Sea data.

Outside consultants were invited to assist in developing the specific survey questionnaire and in analyzing the results. The questionnaire used in our study was based on an instrument developed at Robert Gordon U. [the Offshore Safety Questionnaire (OSQ)] and included the following scales from the OSQ: work clarity, work pressure, safety attitudes, and risk-taking behavior. It also included a section on self-reported accidents and causes that victims ascribed to their accidents. In addition, two scales were developed to measure perceived language difficulties and national-culture differences. The questionnaire was completed by 345 offshore employees. The analysis clearly illustrated a very positive safety climate on the offshore facilities and identified some improvement opportunities.

Background

Safety Climate.

Assessments of the efficacy of occupational health and safety programs traditionally have been based on such measures as frequency and severity of lost-time accidents and direct costs of accidents.1 Although keeping a record of accidents and their immediate causes is valid, causes of accidents frequently are embedded in an organization's structure and do not lend themselves to immediate identification and analysis. Furthermore, identifying the root causes of accidents in highly complex, technological systems is not always feasible because accidents usually are the product of many factors coming together at a particular moment in time.

Recently, however, organizations have become interested in taking a proactive approach to safety by measuring employee attitudes and perceptions of health and safety matters on the premise that "unsafe" attitudes almost always precede accidents. Studies of safety climate, or culture, started with Zohar's 2 description of what he called a "climate for safety" in 20 Israeli industrial organizations. According to those who work in the field of organizational psychology, perceived work climate serves as a stimulus for guiding appropriate as well as inappropriate behavior and "climate can be defined as a set of perceptions and beliefs held by an individual and/or a group about a particular entity." 3 Zohar's2 measure of safety climate was a summary of perceptions that employees share about their work environment and more specifically, "this climate [reflected] employees' perceptions about the relative importance of safe conduct in their occupational behavior." Stepwise discriminant analysis reduced his 40-item questionnaire to eight dimensions:importance of safety training,effects of required work pace on safety,status of the safety committee,status of the safety officer,effects of safe conduct on promotion,level of risk at the work place,management attitudes on safety, andeffect of safe conduct on social status.

Cultural Differences.

These eight dimensions suggest that safety attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of workers in an organization collectively combine to create what is called an organization's safety climate, or culture. Safety climate refers to the state of a system in terms of perceptions of the current environment or prevailing conditions that affect safety. To obtain a more complete measure of the state of safety within an organization, a safety-culture/-climate survey is likely to be necessary. A human factors research team at Robert Gordon U. developed a questionnaire to measure safety culture/climate in the offshore oil and gas industry. The items in the questionnaire were obtained primarily from discussion groups held with the offshore work force. This ensured that concepts measured by the questionnaire were factors that the work force felt had a significant impact on safety and that the statements were expressed in the language of the work force.