Gaining insight into safety culture maturity levels in shipping organizations: questionnaires vs key performance indicators

Safety is of the utmost importance in the maritime industry and shipping organizations are looking for means to continuously improve their safety performances. It has also been dictated by the ISM Code that shipping companies need to implement an “effective safety culture”. Therefore, shipping companies are trying to identify the areas which require further improvements to reach to the desired level of safety within their organizations. Safety culture surveys, interviews and observations are introduced to gain insight into company safety culture maturity levels in shipping, but yet, there is no an available industry wide benchmark for shipping companies in order to determine their current status within the industry and improve their safety culture maturity levels accordingly.
The aim of this study is to develop a benchmark for the safety climate questionnaires amongst the shipping companies where they can compare their safety performance data with other shipping companies according to significant safety attributes/dimensions. This study is a part of the overall safety culture assessment and implementation framework which described briefly in the following sections. The overall framework aims to assess the current safety culture maturity level in a company and develop action plans to improve identified vulnerable areas.