Finnish efforts to strengthen and assess safety culture

Even before the establishment of safety culture criteria the quality assurance programmes and procedures were understood as a useful tool of management and the existing routines and attitudes complied pretty well with the principles defined later on in the reports No. 75-INSAG-3 and No. 75-INSAG-4. Some efforts have been made to assess the status of safety culture in Finland. After the issuing of Decision No. 395/91 both operating organizations and STUK gave statements on the fulfillment of safety culture criteria. Daily findings, conclusions of internal and external QA audits, conclusions of root cause and other incident analyses are used to get an impression of the real status of safety culture. Efforts to improve safety culture have mainly been based on training in different organizations and at different organizational levels and on numerous projects for improving the performance of organizations and individuals. (author)