Our Approach

Since 1979, DEKRA Organizational Safety & Reliability (OSR) has helped organizations successfully improve workplace safety by offering valuable insights, actionable strategies and making safety an integral part of their culture. Our core belief is that people are the real assets of an organization and ensuring their safety is paramount.
DEKRA OSR believes that:
  • Everyone has a right to a safe workplace.
  • Focusing on exposure is the best way to provide a safer workplace.
  • Everyone shares an obligation to control exposure.
  • Leadership creates a culture of caring by:
    - Having a passion for people.
    - Setting realistic objectives.
    - Focusing on human and machine reliability.
    - Creating a desire for change.
  • Reducing exposure is best accomplished through a systems approach.
Central to these beliefs is the concept of exposure identification and reduction.

The Seven Elements That Determine Level of Exposure

We believe safety only improves when exposure is reduced. Exposure is reduced when the hazard that created the exposure is eliminated and/or when people are separated from the hazard and layers of control are put in place that isolate the hazard. For any single uncontrolled exposure in an organization, there are typically numerous factors that contribute to its existence.
Culture: The value system that underlies the way the organization operates, including the importance of safety in everyday decisions.
Effect on exposure: When employees believe the organization cares for them and leadership values their personal safety, they are more likely to make the effort necessary to perform difficult work safely.
Leadership: The extent to which leaders at all levels leverage transformational safety leadership skills to collectively influence the culture.
Effect on exposure: If leaders communicate a motivational safety vision and reinforce it by their own behavior and activities, employees will strive to meet the leaders’ safety expectations.
Governance: The structure used to communicate safety decisions and facilitate the orderly rollout of safety programs and initiatives.
Effect on exposure: When leaders visibly support workplace safety and champion safety initiatives, people take these activities more seriously and work to assure successful implementation of changes.
Exposure Control Systems: The safety systems that help employees identify and control exposures while ensuring these systems are fully utilized.
Effect on Exposure: When safety systems are effective and focused on exposure identification and control, employees can successfully manage workplace exposure, while leaders can focus on finding ways to reduce or eliminate exposures.
Performance Management Systems: The extent to which safety is integrated into selection, development, motivation, and accountability of workers and other performance management activities.
Effect on Exposure: Organizations demonstrate what they truly value by the systems and activities for which they provide recognition and rewards. When safety is prominently rewarded and recognized, leaders demonstrate a strong commitment to addressing the factors that contribute to injuries.
Human Performance Reliability: This element references methods the organization uses to overcome brain-centered hazards and combat human fallibility. It also includes how the organization treats errors.
Effect on Exposure: When organizations build individual, organizational and team capabilities to increase behavioral reliability, safety performance improves.
Working Interface: The point where work gets done, i.e., where employees, working conditions, and work processes and procedures intersect to produce value.
Effect on Exposure: When the working environment is safe, housekeeping is well-maintained, and policies and procedures are not unduly burdensome, employees are naturally inclined to look out for the safety of self and of others.

Is it time to assess how the seven elements in DEKRA OSR’s Exposure Reduction Model™ impact your organization?