Assessing and developing safety management competences

Introduction: Assessing and developing managers’ safety competence is one method for achieving high safety performance in the organisations. Objectives: The aim of this study is to construct a safety management competence development framework to help organisations in safety promotion. Materials and methods: This study comprises a theory-based construction of the safety management competence development framework and an empirical study in a case organisation. Results: The framework consists of definition of safety management competence requirements, self-assessment of the competence, definition of development needs, and implementation of competence development activities. Conclusions: The framework provides the means for systematically improving managers’ safety management competence as an integral part of general management competence development procedures in organisations.