Effective Improvement of Leadership and Safety Culture – Intermediate Report

This research report describes the main findings of the SAFIR2022 project “Effective Improvement of Leadership and Safety Culture” (EPIC) in its first two years of implementation (2019–2020). The general objective of the project was to develop knowledge and approaches that support effective improvement of leadership and safety culture. To achieve this objective, two perspectives were applied and empirical case studies were conducted in all Finnish nuclear power companies.

First, the project examined how methodical safety culture improvement has been implemented in Finnish nuclear power companies, and what the experts’ experiences were. A framework for modelling safety culture improvement as an organizational function was developed, which served as a structure for data collection and analysis. Good practices for implementing effective safety culture improvement were summarized according to the framework based on collected empirical data.

Second, the project examined safety leadership in three different contexts: the operational decision-making process, activities of middle managers, and safety walks. Each of these three case studies were analysed using the same approach, which combined multiple perspectives to leadership. The case studies resulted in sets of factors to take into consideration from leadership perspective in these contexts.