Safety culture assessments
As a result of the four fatalities in 2015, management introduced a strategic focus on fatality prevention and commissioned an independent external assessment of the safety culture at each operating site.
The assessments provided valuable insights into factors that contribute to the safety culture at each site: employee sentiment towards the company, accountability for safety at the line-management level, leadership interactions in the field and control of critical risks. A key learning was that most safety systems and tools are similar around the world. Safety culture comes from the leaders.
Some common findings include: senior leaders have not been role modelling the desired behaviours; there is some confusion over what safety work should be done by various roles; capability gaps exist with front-line leaders; there is a sense of comfort with the status quo; management of low-probability/high-consequence events can be improved; and simple hazard assessment and communication tools are inconsistently used.
In 2018, this was a continuing area of focus. Each site developed an action plan to drive safety culture improvements. Actions included: setting aggressive targets to get leaders in work areas more often; role modelling safety behaviours by leaders; improving the quality of interactions through peer reviews and tiered interactions; increasing the linkage with significant potential incidents; and improving the usage of hazard assessment tools.