Find your rung.Plan the next one.
Leadership. Trust. Systems. People.
THE FIVE RUNGS, FROM THE TOP
YOUR ASSESSMENT ZA
01 Your viewpoint Say whose view this is 02 Culture topics Choose what sounds like you 03 Your ladder position See the next rung
IN THIS ASSESSMENT
Your viewpoint will appear here.
Choose whose view this is.
One view. One step at a time. A self-assessment of how things tend to be done. Not a culture survey, an audit or a compliance finding.
01 / YOUR VIEWPOINT
Whose view is this? Culture looks different from different seats. Your role does not change the result; it tells the reader whose view it is.
Step 1 of 3
Choose the description that sounds most like this workplace
About this assessment ↗
A rung is not a compliance result. Duties under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 and its regulations apply at every rung, and a mature culture does not replace them. This is one person’s view; it becomes useful when it is compared with others.
By theme Middle rung of the topics in each theme
Topic by topic Where each of your answers sits
Your next steps From your three lowest-placed topics
Why you received this position +
All answers & related duties +
Select and copy your report
Opens your email app with your role, result and version only. Review before sending. Individual answers are not included.
Start a new assessment
OHSE Resolved – Safety Culture Self-Assessment: no current completed report. Answer every topic and generate a new result before printing.
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Behaviour, not slogans Descriptions of what you would see on an ordinary day.
Clear about its limits No percentage score. One view, not a survey.
You control the information No accounts, tracking or automatic submission.
BEHIND THE ASSESSMENT
An honest look. A practical next step. Original OHSE Resolved descriptions and rules, informed by the published five-stage safety culture ladder. Not a validated survey instrument, and not connected with any published culture toolkit or certification scheme.
Method & sources ↗
What this assessment can tell you.
The five-stage safety culture ladder was developed by Patrick Hudson, Dianne Parker and colleagues from research in the oil and gas industry. It extends Ron Westrum’s three types of organisation (pathological, bureaucratic and generative), which describe how an organisation handles information, along lines proposed by James Reason. The five stages are Pathological, Reactive, Calculative, Proactive and Generative. It is widely used in high-hazard industries. The stage names are the model’s own terms; the plain line next to each name is ours.
This assessment covers twelve topics in four themes. For each topic you choose, from five descriptions shown in a mixed order that changes every time, the one that sounds most like the workplace on an ordinary day. Each description belongs to one rung. The rung names are not shown while you answer.
How the position is decided
Your ladder position is the middle (median) rung of the topics you placed. It is not an average or a percentage, and it can only name rungs you actually chose. When the middle falls between two neighbouring rungs the result says so, and the next steps work from the lower one. The ladder picture also shows how many topics you placed on each rung, because the spread matters as much as the middle.
A mixed picture. If three or more topics (a quarter or more of those placed) sit two or more rungs away from the middle, or the two middle answers are themselves two or more rungs apart, no single position is given. One label would hide more than it shows.
Enough to go on. At least nine topics must be placed on a rung (one fewer when contractors are not applicable), including at least two of the three trust topics. Otherwise no position is given. Topics answered Not sure are never counted as low or high; they are listed for someone closer to them to answer.
Trust foundations. Three topics carry the higher rungs: safety under production pressure, reporting and speaking up, and the response to mistakes. A trust topic is reported separately when it sits at Reactive or below while the middle is Calculative or above, or when it sits two or more rungs below the middle, so that stronger answers elsewhere cannot hide it.
Next steps come from your three lowest-placed topics, and from every topic on the lowest rung, so that missing basics are never left out. Each shows what you chose, what a better stage looks like and first moves suited to where you are now. From the two lowest rungs the aim shown is a working system, not the next rung’s bad habits. In our experience lasting change comes step by step: copying Generative practices without the basics tends to produce paperwork.
What it cannot tell you
This is one person’s view. Leaders, supervisors, health and safety staff and workers often place the same workplace on different rungs, and the differences are usually the most useful finding. A proper culture assessment gathers many views, tests them against what happens on site and is facilitated by someone independent. People can also tell which descriptions sound better; an honest answer is worth more than a flattering one.
The topics, descriptions, actions and rules are original to OHSE Resolved. They are informed by the published ladder model and do not reproduce any published questionnaire. Some ideas also draw on James Reason’s and David Marx’s work on just culture and Erik Hollnagel’s work on learning from everyday work. The tool has not been validated against incident rates or survey data. It is independent of the Energy Institute’s Hearts and Minds toolkit, which offers established facilitated tools built on the same ladder, and a result here is not a step on NEN’s Safety Culture Ladder certification scheme.
South African law remains separate
A culture position does not show that legal duties have been met. Duties under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 and its regulations apply at every rung. The ‘Related duty’ lines point to the provisions nearest each topic, such as sections 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17 to 20, 24 and 26 of the Act, regulations 6, 8 and 9 of the General Administrative Regulations and, for construction work, the Construction Regulations, 2014. Section 37(2) allows a written agreement with a contractor; it does not remove your own duties. These lines are signposts, not a compliance check. Mines fall under the Mine Health and Safety Act instead.
Privacy
Do not enter people’s names. Answers are held only in page memory and are lost on reload. Downloaded, copied and printed reports contain your answers and should be handled with care, because a candid culture view can be sensitive. The email enquiry contains only your role, result and the tool version; it opens a draft and does not send it. No analytics, cookies, browser storage or automatic submissions are implemented. The host can still keep ordinary server logs.
Sources Sources support the model behind the assessment, not validation of OHSE Resolved’s descriptions or rules.
Source review: 20 September 2026.
