Safety Culture Ladder: frequently asked questions

You can use the Safety Culture Ladder to map out how safe your organisation works. This enables you to not only increase the safety awareness of your employees, but also create a framework for continuous improvement. The Safety Culture Ladder gives provides you with insight into the degree of consciously safe working. The score on the Safety Culture Ladder increases along with safety awareness within your organization.

The Safety Culture Ladder is intended to increase safety awareness within organisations and thus reduce the number of unsafe situations in the workplace, resulting in fewer accidents (and therefore absenteeism and damages). With the Safety Culture Ladder - a supplement to ISO 45001 (OHSAS) and VCA - you gradually work towards the different levels of certification.

The Safety Ladder is based on the Safety Performance Ladder of Dutch rail infrastructure service provider ProRail, but has grown into a widely deployed and accepted instrument with which all kinds of organisations anchor safety and safety awareness in their way of working. Standard management is now in the hands of Dutch standardisation authority NEN and an increasing number of organisations, including large contractors such as TenneT, are using the Safety Culture Ladder as a selection criterion for subcontractors.

Organisations that want to demonstrate that they have anchored safety awareness in their business operations can apply for the ‘Veilig Bewust’-certificaat (‘Safely Aware’ certificate). Kiwa is a NEN-recognised certification body that is allowed to test and certify organisations against the criteria of the Safety Culture Ladder. In addition, Kiwa can train employees who will work with the Safety Culture Ladder within an organisation.

If you choose to apply for the ‘Veilig Bewust’-certificaat and have your organisation assessed according to the Safety Culture Ladder, it is good to prepare by going through the Safety Culture Ladder manual and other documents in advance. You can find it on www.safetycultureladder.com. You then carry out a self-assessment. This allows you to map the current safety culture within your organisation. Kiwa then verifies this baseline measurement based on audits in the company and determines whether you actually comply with it. If that is the case, Kiwa will issue the ‘Veilig Bewust’ certificate the corresponds with the achieved step of the Safety Culture Ladder.

The Safety Culture Ladder consists of five steps that indicate an organisation’s development phase when it comes to safety awareness:

1. Step 1: No high level of safety awareness. The organisation has invested little or nothing in this. Improving safety awareness is sometimes even seen as unnecessary.
2. Step 2: The organisation only changes safety behaviour when something has gone wrong. The change is often short-lived and on an ad hoc basis. This safety behaviour is rated moderately.
3. Step 3: There are safety regulations and the organisation takes responsibility, but often out of self-interest. Safety culture is particularly the focus of (higher) management. Work is being done on safety and that is appreciated.
4. Step 4: Safety is a high priority, it is in every fibre of the company. Structural investments are made in increasing safety awareness and employees are encouraged to confront each other about unsafe behaviour. This is also appreciated.
5. Step 5: Safety is fully integrated into the business processes. It is a permanent part of evaluation within the own organisation as well as with peers in the industry. Security awareness is highly valued.

Kiwa has developed a training course to help you or your employees prepare for setting up or implementing the Safety Culture Ladder:

• The Safety Culture Ladder in practice: After this training you can determine which SCL step your organisation is on and what it takes to keep it and/or move to the next step. The training offers practical tools and enables participants to immediately bring this into practice. More info (Dutch)

Yes, Kiwa can carry out an audit within your company in a limited number of days, giving you an idea of what an SCL audit entails. After this audit, we can also provide you with coaching information to help your company on its way.

An organisation can be re-audited six months after the audit/allocation of a particular step. It is good to give the organisation time to grow to a higher step and thus a higher level of safety awareness. That is why the minimum time has been set at six months.

This is not possible. It is not allowed to combine or integrate the Safety Culture Ladder audits with system certification audits. Kiwa can perform both types of audits separately for you.

Yes, Kiwa has an agreement with NEN and is authorised to perform both the Safety Culture Ladder and SAQ audits. Kiwa has qualified auditors and is represented in various expert boards.

In order to make a sufficient level of safety awareness mandatory in tenders and contracts, the Governance Code Safety in Construction (GCVB) has made agreements in ‘Veiligheid in Aanbestedingen’ (ViA, Dutch website). To increase safety in construction, the Safety Culture Ladder is part of ViA.

The Safety Culture Ladder manual as well as other relevant information and the standard can be found on the website www.safetycultureladder.com.