Heading for change to safety culture

The culture in a shipping organisation is not just about what you do or what type of communications you are having. It is also about how you prioritise safety and if you encourage learning and development. 

 We contacted Fenna van de Merwe who is a principal consultant at DNV, focusing on human factors, safety, risk, and reliability. She is also the lead author of DNV’s recent white paper “Closing the Safety Gap in an era of transformation”, which has received a lot of attention due to its human and safety culture centric approach.  Fenna has long experience from practical safety culture programs run in different shipping companies and operations.

Chapters

• 1:24 The interview begins
• 2:02 Who is Fenna?
• 6:50 What is safety culture?
• 9:01 The safety culture maturity of shipping industry
• 11:30 Working up the ladder
• 19:12 Honest answers from the interviews
• 24:38 Misconception about safety culture
• 27:16 The problems with working in silos
• 30:18 A human centred approach
• 34:02 The technology gap
• 37:43 Leadership that can use negative feedback to develop
• 40:16 A project that went well
• 44:55 It's a top-down process
• 49:02 The art of measuring nothing
• 51:49 Advice step by step if you want to work with your safety culture