SAFETY AND SECURITY: The Company Can Take Steps to Evaluate Its Current Safety Culture

The objective for this report was to assess the extent to which the company has taken steps to determine employees’ current perspectives on safety. We issued this report to provide our findings on a potential issue the company could address in the near term.

We found that the company has not established a baseline measure of its own safety culture which is necessary to track its progress in improving its safety culture as a result of its investment in the SMS. According to a joint U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Railroad Administration study, as well as industry research, a primary method of establishing such a baseline is surveying employees’ values, attitudes, and perceptions about safety and the organization’s actions to improve it.

We recommended the company develop and deploy an employee survey based on the DOT’s ten elements of a strong safety culture. The survey should be conducted in conjunction with planned training, or as soon as practical without delaying training. We also recommended the company use the survey’s results to measure its progress in improving safety culture over time and take action to address additional issues the survey identifies.