Going up for SCL certification: 'It can be fun, too!'

The Safety Culture Ladder (SCL) has already benefited many a company. Although it deals primarily with a serious topic such as safety and health awareness, companies and auditors also experience the certification process as fun, inspiring and motivating.

Hanneke de Vries is the director of the Netherlands Certification Institute (NCI) and is closely involved with companies that are applying for SCL certification. Two qualified auditors then use observations, interviews and project visits to determine the extent of safety and health awareness at companies. "Not everyone is cut out for the job of auditor. You must not be a black-and-white thinker. After all, you have to measure a culture."

The five steps

SCL certification can be obtained at five levels, referred to as "steps" in practice. The company itself chooses the step for which it wants to be audited. Step 1 indicates a pathological culture. The company is not concerned about safety within the company. For that reason, Step 1 is also not used. Step 2 of the SCL indicates that the company is mostly reactive. If something goes wrong, it is seen as bad luck and less as something the company was responsible for.

At Step 3, there are safety rules. Safety is a valued issue. The rules have been introduced by management, albeit still out of self-interest. At level 4, we see that a proactive safety and health culture is present within the company, stemming from an intrinsic motivation. Step 5 is characterized by being progressive. Safety is ingrained in the thinking of all employees. It is openly discussable and employees speak to each other about it. Most companies enter at level 2; this is also the level required by the Governance Code.

Hanneke de Vries, director of the Netherlands Certification Institute (NCI), says, "Our auditors create a pleasant, approachable atmosphere.

Fun and approachable

De Vries understands that most companies are not waiting for "yet another" certification. It requires a lot of effort and comes with quite a price tag. In addition, it is often a must. "Companies have to meet a number of criteria for certification," De Vries admits. "There is no way around that. Yet practice shows that employees become enthusiastic about SCL as soon as they work with it. Our auditors also do everything they can to stimulate this feeling. They create a pleasant, approachable atmosphere and emphasize that every answer is good."

Six business aspects

However genial the atmosphere during the interviews, NCI does proceed with extreme care. It tests corporate culture from six business aspects: leadership & commitment, policy & strategy, organization & contractors, workplace & procedures, deviant communication and audits & statistics. De Vries: "Over the past eight years, NCI has become the market leader in this field. Our auditors possess the soft skills to read culture and thereby also non-verbal behavior. They put people at ease if they are afraid to talk. That makes the preliminary process of the SCL certificate - compared to that of other certificates - very aanattractive. You need not to studeren, wrong answers don't exist and your work environment becomes safer."