Implementing a safety culture in a major multi-national
Introduction
The problem of safety culture – What is it and how do you become one? – is probably the main issue in modern thinking about safety (Turner and Pidgeon, 1997). Since the IAEA report (IAEA, 1991) on the Chernobyl disaster, which introduced the concept of a safety culture to a wider world, failures arising from the culture of an organisation have become seen as the reason why major accidents happen, such as the loss of the space shuttle Columbia (NASA, 2003) and many recent railway disasters such as Clapham Junction (Hidden, 1989), Ladbroke Grove (Cullen, 2001) and the Waterfall disaster (McInerney, 2005). Most attention has been paid to the issue of safety climate (Zohar, 1980), a concept easier to measure (e.g. Flin et al., 2000), but the underlying expectation is that the best and safest organisations have a culture of safety, and that safety climate is an indirect measure of how close an organisation approximates to that.
This paper reports on one program intended to implement a safety culture in a major multi-national oil and gas company. This is a different problem from implementing a safety culture in a single, physically distinct, organisation for a number of reasons. While implementing a safety culture in a small, bounded organisation can be done by the creation of a clear and simple vision and single-minded commitment to that vision from the top, large organisations are much harder to steer, even with full commitment. In a small organisation there will be a more restricted range of operations, leading to a restricted organisational structure; most people can know, or know of, each other. Even a large international company with a limited focus, such as a petrochemical company like DuPont or Dow Chemical, or an aircraft manufacturer like Boeing or Airbus, does not have all these issues to contend with. A modern vertically integrated Oil and Gas Major, like Shell, BP or Exxon, covers a wide range of activities including exploration, oil and gas production, shipping, refining, chemical production, transport and sales. Each of these distinct operations has their own hazards and, often, a set of histories that may result from long practice or be the results of the acquisitions that made them as large as they are. In multi-national organisations there will be a wide range of operations, people will be physically dispersed over a range of time-zones, will operate in different national settings and will also speak a variety of languages. In large organisations there will be a large number of sub-organisations, each with their own history, having a potentially distinct culture and run by managers with their own vision of where to go, and how. The sheer size of the problem and the very nature of such organisations mean that a close range hands-on approach is not feasible. Another factor that has to be considered is the interaction of national with organisational culture. The academic literature has concentrated primarily upon a limited number of types of organisation and studies have been typically carried out in Western environments (Guldenmund, 2000). We have little to guide us when we step outside the comfort zone, the Western cultural environment that has been studied in some detail.
This paper sets out the problem as initially posed by the company, as this was not originally an explicit request to change the culture, although it was soon reframed as such. Then follows an outline of the strategy for implementation that has been developed and that is being carried out, followed by a description of the tactics being employed to develop the culture in specific locations. I will then attempt to assess the difficulties encountered and evaluate the current status of what is still an early stage in the program – a 10-year lifespan is not an unreasonable estimate of how long it may take to acquire a highly developed culture.
Section snippets
Understanding the causes of accidents
The program to be described here forms the continuation of an earlier research program, for the same company, on understanding accident causation that went back as far as 1985. Initially intended to replace an accident taxonomy (Wagenaar and Hudson, 1986), this program developed into a model of how accidents happen (Wagenaar, 1986, Wagenaar and Groeneweg, 1987, Reason et al., 1988, Wagenaar et al., 1994, Reason, 1990, Reason, 1997) that has become widely known as the Swiss cheese model. Within
The culture model
The concept of a safety culture is frequently treated as part of a dichotomy, an organisation either is or is not such a culture; discussion has centred round issues such as whether an organisation has or is such a culture, and what are the characteristics that make such a culture (Hale, 2000, Guldenmund, 2000, Reason, 1997, Reason, 1998). If one merely wishes to describe such a culture this is a natural way to proceed, but should one wish actually to make an organisation become such a culture,
The strategy
The story here is written with the benefit of a degree of hindsight, but hopefully the lessons can serve to develop more foresight in future. Much of the strategy was developed as the program progressed, from frequent small field trials in many different parts of the world, followed by extensive examination of progress and what was identified as working, both well and badly. Most of the actual program was driven by the development of new tools and the accumulation of experience as a result of
The tactics
With the strategy laid out above the next stage involves learning how far back one can stand and how, and how often, one has to intervene physically to ensure that the program is not derailed or loses impetus. The strategy involving pull rather than push means that much control is taken out of the hands of the Centre and of the small group who developed the whole program. Strategy involved creating a product, an advanced HSE Culture, that people actively wanted and then providing them with the
Current status
There has been a considerable take-up and the Hearts and Minds program, in one form or another, is in operation in almost all parts of Shell Group. In 2004 implementation of the Hearts and Minds program became one of the HSE priorities for the Group. This priority was set by the Group HSE Committee that is chaired by Shell Group’s CEO. Almost all management teams have at least gone through the HSE Culture exercises, in which they identify where their operation is on the ladder and select one or
Conclusion
The question that needs to be faced is: Is it working? Is the culture being changed and is the approach described here effective? The answers to these questions seem to be generally positive, but in some ways it is too early to tell. Unlike the descriptions of the high reliability organisations this is not a state that has already been achieved, but rather one that is aspired to. Certainly every experience with asking people what kind of culture they would like has led to people selecting a
References (54)
- et al.
Measuring the safety climate: identifying the common features
Safety Science
(2000) The nature of safety culture: a review of theory and research
Safety Science
(2000)Editorial: culture’s confusions
Safety Science
(2000)- et al.
Investigating employee perceptions of a framework of safety culture maturity
Safety Science
(2006) - et al.
A framework for understanding the development of organisational safety culture
Safety Science
(2006) - et al.
Accidents at sea: multiple causes and impossible consequences
International Journal of Man Machine Studies
(1987) - Bryden, R., 2006. The Organisational Antecedents of Individual Safety Behaviour in the U.K. Offshore Oil and Gas...
- et al.
Because we want to
Safety and Health Practitioner
(2005) - Croes, S.A.E.W., 2000. Onderzoek naar veiligheidscultuur Koninklijke Luchtmacht Basis Volkel [Study of the Safety...
Report on the Piper Alpha Disaster
(1990)
The Ladbroke Grove Rail Inquiry
Management and myths: challenging the fads, fallacies and fashions
Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway Accident
Safety, Culture and Risk: The Organisational Causes of Disasters
Cost and benefit in HSE: a model for calculation of cost–benefit using incident potential
Tripod Delta: proactive approach to enhanced safety
Journal of Petroleum Technology
The Hearts and Minds project: creating intrinsic motivation for HSE
HSE tools: Which tools are appropriate?
Managing non-compliance: moving from theory to practice
The Hearts and Minds Program: understanding HSE culture
Cited by (213)
Nudging safety behavior in the steel industry: Evidence from two field studies
2024, Safety ScienceLearning not blaming: Investigating ten fatal road traffic collisions using STAMP-CAST
2023, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary PerspectivesErrores Honestos y Segundas Víctimas: Hacia una Cultura Justa para la Seguridad del Paciente
2023, Journal of Healthcare Quality Research