Guest Editorial: More Than Just Talk What Senior Leaders Must Do To Drive Safety Performance Improvement
Authors: Knode Tom , King David 
Published: October 2022

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Over the past few decades, the upstream oil and gas industry has demonstrated marked improvement in safety performance as measured by traditional lagging indicators. This success has been supported by the development of safety management systems, improved training and equipment, as well as numerous guides on the most critical component: safety leadership. Organizations such as the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP), Step Change in Safety, and Center for Offshore Safety (COS), to name a few, provide guidance and encourage leadership to actively participate in driving the message and expectations around leadership engagement on safety.

The SPE Technical Report Getting to Zero and Beyond: The Path Forward (March 2018) states that to achieve a culture of perfection, actions must be led from the top. In the context referenced in this article, leaders are those individuals in senior positions who are recognized by their organization as having responsibility for operations and can commit financial resources to reduce risk (the US Federal Aviation Administration would call this person an “accountable executive” per the regulations).

Many leaders commit to the aspiration of no harm to people, but they may need help on the substance and actions that will make a difference. The guidance documents from the organizations and technical report listed above provide sound foundations for messaging, as well as what follows in this article. The authors have had robust experience in safety culture and performance improvement, and where it succeeds or fails.

Start With the Basics

The first thing leaders must do is provide a Statement of Organizational Intent (SOI). An SOI starts with, but goes well beyond, the aspiration of No Harm. The SOI should cover what operational leaders will do to help improve the safety culture. This should be specific to the needs of the organization and include an honest assessment of the current state of safety. It is vital to understand what is going on at the front lines: (a) why are incidents occurring, and (b) what are the trends of the failures. The SOI will move past the superficial view that “incident rates are too high and therefore, we must do better.”

There is a need for more information on performance beyond the traditional lagging indicators of incident rates. A good starting point is adding near misses, observations, and incidents with a high potential for serious outcome. Beyond that, leaders need to identify measures of inputs that make a difference in performance. Traditionally this may have meant something like training hours, but that assumes the training is effective. The measures must include a view of strategic plans and implementation progress.

A means of tracking and verification of progress is needed as well. Senior leadership then must routinely, and personally, follow up on the progress and hold the organization accountable for following through to completion. If not, there can be elements within the organization who will simply wait out the strategies, knowing there is no consequence for lack of participation.