Organizational & Safety Culture Evaluations

Does your organizational or safety culture promote excellent performance? Do your leaders send the message that safety and security are absolutes that will not be compromised?

If you are not completely confident in your answers to these questions, you may decide that an evaluation of your organizational culture would be beneficial. Our team of subject matter experts has extensive experience in workplace evaluations for the nuclear, chemical, and other high-hazard industries.

ORAU’s interdisciplinary team of former executives, industrial/organizational psychologists, communication professionals, health scientists, engineers, biostatisticians, and data scientists provide independent analysis of your situation to help you make management decisions based on facts. Feedback from your employees through interviews, focus groups, workplace surveys, and observations help you uncover and solve employee relations issues and concerns that impact organizational performance. When organizational culture issues are identified and addressed, your workforce is more engaged, more productive, and provides greater responsiveness to your customers.

Understanding the relationship between safety culture and safety performance

ORAU researchers recently co-author Understanding the relationship between safety culture and safety performance indicators in U.S. nuclear waste cleanup operations, published in the October 2023 edition of Safety Science. The study examined the relationship between nuclear safety culture and safety performance by evaluating the relationships between safety culture traits and two types of performance measures—personal safety and operations indicators—for a U.S. nuclear waste cleanup contractor.

What is safety culture and a safety conscious work environment?

Safety culture is an organization’s values and behaviors modeled by its leaders and internalized by its members, which serve to make safe performance of work the overriding priority to protect the workers, the public, and the environment.

A safety conscious work environment is a work environment in which employees feel free to raise safety concerns to management without fear of retaliation.

What is safety culture and a safety conscious work environment?

What we offer

Safety culture evaluations
Nuclear safety culture evaluations
Security culture evaluations

Customized employee surveys
Independent assessments and analysis
Employee engagement/satisfaction surveys

Industries we serve

(including North American Industry Classification System Code)

Utilities (221)
Construction of Buildings (236)
Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction (237)
Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing (324)
Chemical Manufacturing (325)
Primary Metals Manufacturing (331)
Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing (332)

Pipeline Transportation (486)
Telecommunications (517)
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (541)
Waste Management and Remediation Services (562)
Hospitals (622)
Space Research and Technology (927)
National Security and International Affairs (928)

The relationship between perception and performance

A basic question that is sometimes asked is, “why do we even care about perceptions of the workforce?” We care about the perceptions of the workforce because ultimately they impact individual performance and that impacts organizational performance.

Guide for collecting and analyzing qualitative data for safety culture evaluations

Download the guide

30,000 nuclear workers surveyed on safety cultures in their workplaces

ORAU has performed periodic, comprehensive evaluations of nuclear industry workforces and practices in an effort to monitor and continuously improve safety culture. By using written surveys and electronic surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews, ORAU gained input from 30,000 workers over six years, which resulted in valuable feedback on the effectiveness of safety programs and initiatives.

Contact us

For more information or to schedule an organizational culture consultation, contact Davyda Hammond, Ph.D., at (865) 241-7626 or davyda.hammond@orau.org.

If you have questions about contracting vehicles, contact the ORAU Contracts Administration Office at (865) 576-7618 or angela.holmberg@orau.org.