Implementation of a safety culture in organisation - the HSC-Standard

Abstract

In recent years, ISO, IFS, BRC and FSSC 22000 standards in the areas of quality, environment and occupational health and safety have been increasingly implemented in companies in various indus-tries. The main focus of these developed standards are the processes. But the past shows that the factor human is another very important factor, which should be much more in the middle in organiza-tion. The new developed guideline has the human factor in the foreground. In particular, the attitude and awareness of occupational safety and health protection in the behaviour of employees at all lev-els of the organisation are at the centre of consideration.
Inspired by this approach, a group of experts from the fields of quality sciences, standardisation and certification as well as consulting for system-relevant companies in the agricultural and food industry came together to form a committee during the Corona crisis in spring 2020. The common goal is to develop a new standard. The first step is to establish criteria for a guideline.
and establish an evaluation system for several pillars of a House of Total Safety Culture (HSC) tai-lored to the entire value chains of the agri-food sector. In addition, the essential building blocks of the guideline must be defined. The attitude of managers and employees, their behaviour and their competence form the roof of the standard. The integrated management system with a continuous improvement process forms the foundation of the House of Total Safety Culture across the company in value chains. Qualification and communication are the main pillars and thus further elements of the HSC. Particular attention is paid to the fields of action of occupational safety and health protection, food safety, animal and environmental protection as well as sustainability and digitisation. They form the four inner pillars of the House of Total Safety Culture. The design of the respective certification levels is considered as a “construction phase”. As part of the standardisation process, the coordina-tion of the respective requirements for safety culture has not yet been completed. This article first provides an overview of the state of knowledge in relation to the established standards and norms of the agri-food industry with special consideration of the Safety Culture Ladder model. The procedure for developing and establishing the new guideline is then explained. For this purpose, the composi-tion of the expert forum is presented before the concrete steps to establish the guideline are present-ed. The model of the House of Total Culture is presented below. Building on this, the procedure for assessing the degree of maturity and possible concepts of continuing training are explained before the conclusion of this article.