Making the railway system work better for society.
Making the railway system work better for society.
The survey is comprised of two main parts. The first part includes a welcome text and the profile questions that describe the respondents. The second part is a set of 48 safety statements.
It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete the survey, including the profile questions and the safety statements. There is no time limit, but we encourage the respondents to reply spontaneously.
The ERA-SCS is a standardised European tool allowing to capture the safety perception of railway professionals. It has been developed with the support of experts working in all parts of the railway system and can be used in any kind of organisation, including operational companies, manufacturers and service providers, as well as regulatory bodies.
The survey is based on the European Railway Safety Culture Model, which is a comprehensive framework to support the development of a positive safety culture within railway organisations. By using the EUSurvey interface, it is easy to access and available in all EU languages. The results will contribute to a better understanding of safety culture of European Railways.
The standard version has been designed by the Agency to capture the safety perceptions of European railway professionals. Each response provided via this unique version will be used to improve the understanding of the safety climate of the railway sector in Europe.
The partner version is a dedicated version elaborated together with a partner – an organisation that choses to cooperate with ERA for a better understanding of their own safety climate. It contains the same standard questions and statements, but might contain additional ones added on the request of the partner. The results are not only used for the European analysis, but are made available for the partner to use as input in improvement activities.
The Agency helps the partners design their own questions to better align the survey with their needs (e.g. organisational structure). ERA also supports the partners’ communication activities by providing a dedicated communication toolkit. Indeed, the usefulness of the partner's results also depends on the response rate. Dissemination of the survey is key to increase the response rate.
On the partner side, the person or the team involved in the customisation should understand the basic concepts of safety culture and safety management, as well as have an understanding of the organisation’s structure and internal communication channels.
It depends on the organisation, its size, structure and the communication plan. One week might be sufficient for a small company, but larger ones can take up to 2 months. In any case, the decision should be made in order to allow the highest response rate.
On a level of an organisation, the bigger the sample, the more reliable and meaningful the survey results. Moreover, ideally, responses have to be balanced like the organisation. On the European level, the more responses there are in the survey, the better and more complete our understanding of the safety climate of European railways.
There is no set minimum, and it also depends in the size of the organisation. A comprehensive picture requires involvement of all the department and units. Moreover, in order for ERA communicate the results to the partner organisation, we expect 9 respondents at least for each value of each question (if not, some grouping will be necessary). For more advanced analyses, more respondents are needed to ensure both anonymity and statistical reliability.
All the staff should be involved, including the non-safety and administrative personnel. The profile questions are designed to include such respondents.
Yes, it is highly advised, especially if they provide products and services which can impact safety, directly or indirectly
Yes, as union representatives contribute to the safety of all staff. In addition, they may promote the involvement of staff in the activity and help achieve a high response rate.
The results of a partner version will be transmitted only to the survey coordinator of the partner organisation. The data collected inside a partner organisation will be also added to the European pool of responses, but without any reference to that specific partner organisation.
Yes, a digital report with the results will be provided to the survey coordinator of the partner organisation. We encourage a wide dissemination of the survey results within the partner organisation.
Most sections and visualisations of the digital report can be made available in the main survey language (selected by the survey coordinator of the partner organisation).
The results should be made available to the survey coordinator within one month after the survey is closed. The exact date will depend on the amount of surveys finishing at a given time period.
The Agency will not share any results of a partner with its NSA. While we encourage sharing the survey results with the NSA, this decision belongs to the partner’s organisation.
This is up to the partner: the results can be externally shared with the regulators, other companies, contractors/suppliers, customers as well as the general public.
It is up to the organisation how to use the results. It can be an input into a safety culture action plan, a part of a risk management cycle, a start of a more structured approach to the understanding and development of safety culture, a way to discuss safety with other stakeholders in the sector, etc.