Academic Year: 2026-2027

Safety culture is becoming the next stage of safety development. This course equips HSE professionals with the leadership, behavioral, and psychological skills needed to strengthen safety awareness and drive continuous improvement. For many companies, safety culture is becoming the next level in safety development. They begin to realise that, given developments and changes, it is necessary to develop not only the technical and organisational aspects of safety, but also to focus much more on management approach, safety leadership, employee behaviour, and their safety awareness. Building a strong safety culture has many positive effects in other areas of company development. It is therefore essential that HSE professionals have sufficient knowledge in this area and, in particular, that they acquire the skills necessary for continuous improvement in safety culture. These are a set of mainly soft skills in the areas of influencing human behavior, psychology, habits, and leadership, which they should acquire during their training. Students will be able to: describe different stages of safety culture, understand variation and similarity among the different models of safety culture, define the main indicators for different stages of safety culture, understand principles during changing process during development of safety culture, apply knowledge – prepare plan for increasing level of safety culture in company, take the role of OHS/EHS manager in development of safety culture level. Safety culture – history, definition, development. From nuclear safety to HSE. Safety culture models. Stages of safety culture development in the company – basic indicators. Aspects of safety culture and possibility for evaluation. Safe behaviour – a key factor in safety culture, principles of human behaviour, and a model of human behaviour. Creating safe routines, group behaviour, changes in human behaviour, and psychological aspects important for creating safe habits. The role of individual management levels in creating a safety culture, effective safety leadership. Mission, vision, and goals – their role in safety culture. HSE promotion. Communication as a key factor in achieving a high level of safety culture. Employee involvement, participation, and motivation in HSE. Safety management tools and their links to safety culture. Developing a safety culture – change management. The most common problems in implementing programs for developing a safety culture, weakening of the safety culture.