Organizational and Environmental Factors Influencing an HSE Culture

Abstract

Abstract Over 90% of all recorded incidents are attributed to the Human Element, however little effort is made to address the organizational and environmental factors influencing on the individuals behavior, for example; poor morale, lack of HSE belief, distrust in management's commitment, inadequate resources, conflicting organizational policy and objectives, and endless obstacles in the way to hinder real improvement. This paper will demonstrate through three independent HSE Climate Surveys (conducted on three Oil and Gas companies), that by identifying and addressing the influencing factors impacting human behaviors, a real improvement can be achieved in an organization or team HSE culture. This can be done through moral building and developing teamwork, entrenching employee responsibility and supervisor accountability, empowering employees to ‘stop work’, and continually making the benefits of an incident free workplace clearly understood. Through these surveys, it was found that there are certain prerequisites to such improvements; First and foremost, management must be accessible and willing to listen to the employees’ needs and wants. Secondly, management decisions must be transparent; they must address all moral issues and demonstrate visible and passionate safety leadership on a day-to-day basis. Thirdly, providing the necessary resources and processes to the employees is crucial for them to move towards a sustainable and healthy work environment. By addressing root causes influencing the Human behaviors all three companies have measured an overall reduction in high potential incidents with an increase in identified substandard practices and conditions. The company and its contractors’ HSE culture have improved due to management's vision and commitment to address the underlying human behavior influences and to move their workforce from ‘understanding HSE, to believing in HSE’. This paper is a follow up study form a previous presented paper (SPE 111848), the main content is repeated but the results include the third study.