HSE and Culture in the Petroleum Industry in Norway

Abstract

AbstractThe Petroleum Safety Authorities Norway specifies in its regulations that enterprises must have a sound Health, Environment and Safety (HSE) culture. Different approaches are needed to obtain insight in the HSE culture.This study were conducted in one of the large oil and gas companies in Norway to gain knowledge about factors that affected the HSE culture in the petroleum industry; both onshore and offshore. A special interest was organisational and working environment factors. The aim was to analyse the connections between what employees and managers say about HSE culture and what the company measures in objective HSE data.Besides interviews to explore the important factors in the HSE culture concept, self-reported data from a company survey were used. It included demographic data and HSE climate items factorized into the factors "Perception of nearest manager", "Confidence in management", "HSE behaviour", "Competence", "Collaboration" and "Procedures". Health and safety performance data from 2004 was analyzed; sickness absence, recordable injuries, serious incidents and undesirable incidents. To study the relation between factors in the self-reported working condition survey and injuries summarized for 2000 to 2004, linear regression analyses were carried out. More than 3000 employees were included in the study.We found that all the HSE climate factors were negatively associated with recordable injuries, but only the factor "Confidence in management" was significantly negatively associated with recordable injuries. The conclusions were that working and organisational surveys might be used as indicators of risk of injuries. Management style and trust in the manager were important factors for personal injuries.The study results give answer to the hypothesis that comparing and analysing data from different HSE measurement instruments might give a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses in the HSE culture.