Behavioural Change as a Catalyst for Sustained HSE Performance - The Bonga Safety Leadership Story
Authors: Shittu Dauda , Aghaiyo David , Ogbe Mejebi Austin , Ekomemhen Agatha 
Published: April 2024

Establishing a safe working environment, through the elimination and reduction of risks, is a continuous focus in high-risk organisations like in the oil and gas industry. While there have been significant improvements in safety performance driven by established systems and processes, as well as advancements in technology, safety incidents have not been eliminated. Thus, there has been a shift in focus to human behaviours as a core area to improve health, safety and environment (HSE) performance in the industry following several studies that attributed the cause of most safety incidents to employees’ behaviours. This paper presents the Safety Leadership Journey in Bonga - comprising offshore deepwater oil and gas production, processing and export facilities, and onshore offices, and provides a detailed description of how several behavioural change programmes have been used as a catalyst to improve and sustain best-in-class safety and operational performance in the asset. This paper is one of a series of Bonga-themed papers for OTC 2024.

Triggered by a need for change at a time when the organisation was experiencing behavioural and attitude issues that remained threats to Goal Zero – our aim to relentlessly pursue no harm to people and no significant incidents - the Bonga Asset embarked on a journey to influence safety behaviour through several initiatives that focus on promoting interaction between leaders and the workforce. These include the deployment of Family Units - an organisational culture change vehicle that focuses on influencing the right behaviours in personnel through a healthy relationship – the family feel, among the workforce; reshaping System Patterns – a thread of systemic issues and behaviours that drive recurring problems in the organisation and influence decision making, and the implementation of the Human Performance Principles – the way the people, culture, equipment, work systems and processes interact as a system, to create a psychologically safe environment.

These initiatives have enabled the leaders to exert their influence on the behaviour of the workforce towards safety by providing an opportunity for the workforce to bring up issues of concern to leadership, and continue to provide the leaders with the necessary information and insights on issues concerning safety. The journey has contributed to over 6 years of safe continuous operation of the deepwater FPSO without a Loss Time Injury or Process Safety Tier 1/2 events, despite the exposure of over 6,475,205 man-hours covering several medium/high-risk activities including over 183 export operations and a series of maintenance activities that included Scheduled Maintenance Activities, Turnaround Maintenance and Upgrade of the Buoy.

The approach adopted and lessons learnt are well described and can be used as a template for other organisations operating in high-risk environments to drive behavioural/culture change for best-in-class safety and operational performance.