ESTABLISHING A "JUST CULTURE" FOR WORK SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

When aiming at implementing methods and strategies for occupational, industrial and environmental safety similar and related paradoxes and problems can be observed. This concerns accident prevention as well as the reduction of environmental impacts. Experiences show that the necessity for safety measures is not fully accepted by industries and organizations, although obvious benefits can be observed. Accident prevention measures and strategies for raising environmental safety can save human lives, improve human health and decrease adverse environmental impacts. But besides human benefits, there are also material benefits through cost reduction and damage prevention. This paper will discuss how the desired acceptance can be achieved by establishing a so-called “just culture” in work environments. "Just culture" means raising the consciousness of workers and employees, as well as their superiors and in a broader sense also stakeholders, for accident prevention and impact reduction. This is done by analysing errors, unsafe behaviour or near-accidents (so-called "Near Misses") as well as environmental impacts without blaming an individual for arising errors, but for future improvement. Experiences from "ultra-safe" industries show that a zero-error culture is neit her appropriate nor goalprominent for raising safety. Rather, risk reduction by positive handling of errors can lead to the desired results. An experience made by the own makes a more fundamental learning process possible than prohibitions, badly understood rules or dogmatic instructions for preventing errors. This applies for individuals as well as groups or organizations as such. For example, in the ventures capital industry in the USA it is more accepted if an entrepreneur had a failure already once in his success story. It is even assumed that an entrepreneur, who once made the experience of failure, will not make the same or a similar error in the future again. He wins the confidence of the ventures capital investor, if he can communicate to have learned from errors of the past