Three video films shot at the recent Cardinus Risk Management health and safety forum bring valuable safety culture information to internet viewers via YouTube. The films can be seen on the Cardinus YouTube channel at youtube.com/cardinusrisk

The forum, held in the summer at the Cardinus offices in London, features presentations from leading figures in safety climate and culture.

Caroline Sugden is technical lead – human and organisational factors at the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL), part of the Health and Safety Executive. Her talk covers understanding workers’ perceptions of organisational commitment, the effectiveness of procedures and the interaction of production versus health and safety targets with examples drawn from the years that HSL has been investigating safety culture. Dr Sugden was involved in the safety culture work at the Olympic Park.

Jane Hopkinson also works at HSL where she is a senior psychologist. She discusses the individual and organisational factors that influence worker behaviour, the key principles of behaviour change and some tools and techniques that can be used to promote healthy and safe behaviour in the workplace.

Mark Preston, head of safety consultancy at Cardinus Risk Management, discusses the issues and problems that can arise as well as the benefits of changing behaviour of the workforce with regard to health and safety.

He looks at how HSE inspectors are taking safety culture into consideration in serious incident investigations and site visits. Mr Preston reveals how they are attempting to measure levels of safety culture and how instituting such programmes can help protect organisations not just from serious incidents but from prosecution following those accidents.