Implementing a safety culture in a major multi-national

This paper reports on the implementation of an advanced safety culture in a major oil and gas multi-national. The original proposal came from the company after it had become clear that expectations had been raised after the successful implementation of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Management Systems subsequent to the Piper Alpha disaster. The proposal made by the company, to develop a workforce intrinsically motivated for HSE, was operationalised as the development of an advanced safety culture after a review of the literature on motivation. The model used was the HSE Culture Ladder that had become the industry standard accepted by the OGP (International Association of Oil and Gas Producers). This model was intended to show that there were considerable opportunities for improvement even after HSE-MS had been implemented and that the more advanced cultures were ones people felt were desirable and achievable for themselves. Once top management had provided the initial support for the development of a more advanced safety culture, a number of supporting tools were developed, under the Hearts and Minds brand, and a strategy for implementation was developed that relied more on bottom-up ‘pull’ rather than top-down ‘push’ – the standard implementation model for new initiatives. The tools were designed to provide a clear direction, a road map to an advanced culture defined in terms provided by people within the industry, to support lasting changes in attitudes and beliefs, to promote an increased feeling of control when solving HSE-specific problems – all components of a more advanced culture. The tactics employed, using a pull rather than a push approach, had to allow for local variation within the general limits set by the strategy that eventually became a mixed top-down and bottom-up approach. Next there is a discussion of the current status and the lessons to be learnt from the implementation so far: moving away from command and control is hard for large organizations; such programs have to be driven by different performance indicators; managers have to learn to disperse their control; it is essential to communicate both successes and failures. Finally there is a discussion about the respective roles of academia and the industry in such endeavours, the requirement to concentrate on more than a single cultural characteristic such as reporting, and the difficulties of evaluating such programs in a worldwide environment that is continuously changing.