A New Way of Thinking about Sustainable HSE Performance
When leadership practices are on the mark they create employee engagement. Workers will volunteer to be part of safety performance improvement and will apply considerable discretionary effort to achieving these improvements.
With good leadership practices you get a strong and positive climate for safety performance. Understanding the Sustainable Performance Model provides clarity about how the organization's practices are shaped and sustained and how there are linked to sustainable performance.
The Sustainable Performance Model is neutral - it describes what is invariant. It is up to the organization to determine what kinds of outputs are created (consciously or unconsciously).
This model is iterative and the components interact. By this we mean that performance is influenced and determined by each of these elements and factors listed in the model. For example, Leadership Practices have to fit the current Climate, but Leadership Practices also have an effect on the Climate, so over time they steer or create aspects of the Climate.
Leadership Practices and Climate will drive or influence Employee Outcomes. As Employee Outcomes (Processes, behaviours, levels of committment, etc) become shared these create shared work practices.
Work practices serve to create an outcome for the customer (Internal or External) and over time these work practices drive results.
Culture appears at this point in the model because we are recognising that an organization's culture develops over time and is driven by all the previous elements of the model.
However, as we cycle around the model the integral nature of organizational performance can be understood. E.g. Does culture drive performance or does performance drive culture? Well, clearly culture is a big determinant of performance - it can be an enabler of high performance or a re-enforcer of poor performance. However, performance also has an effect on culture - sustained success and high performance creates a different culture.
