Organisational Culture and Employee Wellbeing

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Organisational Culture and Employee Well-being

• Dr Cameron Newton
• Queensland University of Technology

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Overview

• Organisational Culture what is it?
• Functions, uses, and effects of organisational
  culture
• Organisational culture and well-being
• Safety values and employee well-being

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What Is It? Schein (1990)

• A pattern of basic assumptions
• Invented, discovered, or developed by a group
• Happens as a group learns to cope with work place
  issues and adapting to the external environment
• Represents things that have worked well enough in
  the past to be considered valid
• Is taught to new members
• Highlighted as the correct way to think, feel,
  and behave

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Other Definitions

• a system of shared meaning
• Robbins et al. (2001)
• the personality of an organisation
• Kilman et al. (1985)
• something an organisation is
• Pacanowsky and ODonnell-Trujillo (1983)
• the way we do things around here
• Uttal (1983)

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The Iceberg Model

Artefacts clearly visible language, behaviours,
and other workplace symbols
Observable
Values shared rules residing just under the
surface that govern behaviours
Unobservable
Assumptions taken-for-granted beliefs about human
nature and the environment that reside deep below
the surface
see Black, Gregerson, and Mendenhal (1992)
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Organisational culture

• Core level
• Strongly-held and often unspoken ideologies,
  values and assumptions.
• Strategic level
• The expressed values and beliefs that reflect
  what a group wishes itself to be and wants others
  to believe about it.
• Manifest level
• day-to-day behaviors and conditions, which often
  reflect a compromise between the above two levels
  and the immediate situation.

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Functions of Culture

• defines boundaries
• conveys a sense of identity
• generates commitment to higher-order goals
• enhances stability of the social system
• serves as a regulatory mechanism for attitudes
  and behaviours

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Culture Typologies

• Strong weak
• Positive negative
• Passive defensive aggressive defensive
  constructive
• Values - dimensional fluidic typologies

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Organisational Culture Inventory (Cook
Lafferty, 1983, 1986)

• 3 major culture types
• Constructive interaction, helping - meet own
  needs, self-actualising, humanistic-encouraging,
  affiliative norms
• Passive-Defensive interact in ways that doesnt
  threaten own security - approval, conventional,
  avoidance norms
• Aggressive-Defensive approach tasks in a
  forceful way to protect status security -
  oppositional, power, competitive, perfectionistic
  norms

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CVF Culture Types (Quinn Rohrbaugh, 1983)
flexibility
internal
external
control
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Effects of Culture

• decreases anxiety that results from an inability
  to understand, predict, and control events
• has the potential to enhance performance,
  satisfaction, and expectations, attitudes, and
  behaviours in organisations
• if not aligned to changing expectations of
  internal and/or external stakeholders,
  effectiveness can decline
• Impact employee health

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Some Evidence

• Flexible cultures - better morale, lower
  turnover, better health, greater autonomy,
  respect for persons, greater commitment to
  organisation
• Control cultures evidence for lower morale,
  lower job satisfaction, less autonomy, higher
  intentions to leave, lower commitment of
  organisation
• But depends on what task are being performed
• What about safety culture where does it fit
  here
• Across all organisation cultures and types

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Culture pockets subcultures

• Dominant Culture
• expresses the core values that are shared by the
  majority of organisational members
• is a macro view of culture that gives an
  organisation its distinct personality
• Sub-Cultures
• potential for multiple and even competing
  sub-cultures in organisations
• typically defined by departmental designations
  and geographical separation

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Safety culture

• is the product of the individual and group
  values, attitudes, competencies and patterns of
  behaviour that determine the commitment to, and
  the style and proficiency of an organisations
  health and safety programmes
• .the values, norms, and beliefs which a
  particular group of people share with respect to
  risk and safety

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Health and Safety Culture

• Awareness of health and safety
• Attitudes of management to health and safety
• Attitudes of employees to health and safety
• Willingness of staff to discuss health issues
• Willingness to take action to deal with health
  issues
• Valuing
• Safety training
• Safety motivation
• Safety awareness
• Safety leadership
• Safety policies

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Positive Safety Culture

• Organisations with a positive safety culture are
  characterised by communication founded on mutual
  trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of
  safety, and by confidence in the efficacy of
  preventative measures.
• Effective safety communication
• Values learning about safety
• Resources committed to safety
• Participation involvement in safety related
  matters
• Management commitment visibility
• Productivity safety balance
• Safety training
• Safe working environment

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Safety and organisational culture

• What happens of there is a weak (or no) safety
  culture?
• Any organisation not just one that engages
  potential dangerous work tasks.
• Accidents can happen\injury from prolonged poor
  practice (RSI)
• Employee well-being can suffer psychological
  and physiological
• Productivity
• Satisfaction
• Interpersonal conflict
• It goes on..

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Some stats

• Australia 2000-2001
• 319 deaths in the workplace
• 142000 new compensation claims
• Victoria alone 4,375 admissions to hospital
  16,256 presentations to emergency department (due
  to unintentional work injury)
• USA 2001
• 3.9M disabling injuries, 5,300 deaths

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Potentially unsafe cultural attitudes

• Remember - Culture refers to the values, norms
  and beliefs that influence how to behave. Some
  potentially unsafe normative beliefs.
• Sometimes it is necessary to take chances to get
  a job done.
• Sometimes it is necessary to turn a blind eye
  when safety rules are broken.
• Our leaders say Safety First, but they dont
  really mean it.
• Near-Misses are valuable learning experiences and
  should be reported.

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Safety research

• Leading cause of accidents at-risk behaviour of
  employees
• About half of accidents can be prevented by the
  people who work in the area
• At-risk behaviour behaviour that exposes you,
  others, environment to damage/injury i.e., more
  likely to be injured, injure others, cause damage

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Safety research

• Safety climate employees perceptions of the
  value given to safety
• Some research outcomes
• Perceive work environment safe more likely have
  positive attitudes towards employers
• Co-worker safety norms related to higher safety
  environment and lower at-risk behaviour
• Management safety values related to lower at-risk
  behaviours
• If think there is a positive safety climate then
  likely more
• motivation to be safer, and
• favourable safety outcomes (e.g., employee
  well-being).

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Case study

• One of the safest airlines in the world
• But not performing so well with employee safety
• gt 7,000 employee injuries pa
• gt 40,000 days lost pa
• unsatisfactory audit results by regulators
• Committed to new goal -No injuries to anyone at
  any time

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Case study

• Changing the safety culture
• Key elements
• comprehensive assessment of performance
• top leadership workshops
• new structures to report from all operations
• regular progress evaluations
• leading indicators behaviours with outcomes
• communication of safety improvements
• personal safety action plans

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Case study - Outcomes

• 70 reduction in lost time injury rate
• 50 reduction in lost work days
• 500 million projected cost savings
• The dedication and ongoing commitment by every
  person to carry out each task the right way every
  time has underscored the success of the safety
  culture change program

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Take home messages

• Organisational culture is influential
• We can all influence organisational culture
• Safety culture is influential so long as taken
  seriously and commitment
• All-round improver of employees lives
• Stress and strain, satisfaction, turnover, psych
  and phys health
• Be safe and support a safe culture