Benefits of Risk Aware Culture

According to Greg Enright from Intelex Technologies, “The single biggest factor that marks the difference between organizations that repeatedly experience health and safety or quality-related incidents and those for which such occurrences are a rarity, is culture”.

The Intelex Insight Report shows the benefits of a strong risk-oriented culture. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Organization (OSHA), a strong risk-conscious culture brings countless benefits to an organization, including: 

  Common Barriers

Even though risk aware culture offers these advantages, the report also highlights the common impediments that prevent its development in organizations. These are:

• General attitude. A lack of trust between employees and in the employee-manager dynamic tends to create a climate of fear. This arises when the company has a history of not involving employees in the decision- making process and due to workers who concentrate on their colleagues’ imperfections.  
• Roles and responsibilities. When there is uncertainty among workers about what they are responsible for and what they need to do in their assigned roles, disorder and frustration often result.
• Training. Inadequate training, expecting everything to change overnight and assigning too much responsibility to individuals can all hamper training efforts and deflate efforts aimed at creating cultural change. 
• Structure. A dearth of structure will result in employees making wrong assumptions and ultimately not doing what is required to reduce risk levels, while too much structure can stifle enthusiasm and create  resentment. Management must be clear, and must give initiatives time to show results. A balance needs to be maintained.

You can read the entire Insight Report by Greg Enright here.

A Review on Accident Hazards

Hazards in oil and gas industry can be broadly classified into:

• Safety and injury hazards
• Health and illnesses hazards

Recent studies (Ref: ARIA Database) show an alarming increasing rate of major accidents in bioenergy production in recent years. The database holds the complete information on type of accident, location, source and causes, injuries and fatalities, economic losses and asset damages. This increase maybe due to increase in facilities and operating hours.

Below figure shows number of major accidents related to bioenergy supply chain per year (a) and aggregated on a triennial basis (b).

Causes of Accidents

Lean Safety Methods

Robert Hafey is a long time safety consultant and a proponent of the Lean safety methods. He has also authored two books (Lean Safety Gemba Walks: A Methodology for Workforce Engagement and Culture Change and Lean Safety: Transforming your Safety Culture with Lean Management) on the same. “Lean safety is a systematic approach to identifying and controlling the waste in processes and activities which can cause accidents or illnesses. “

According to this, organizations should show a continuous commitment to safety improvement and not just achieve the regulatory compliance. This will happen only when managers truly care about the well-being of employees.

• Managers need to have regular gemba walks and carry out open discussions with employees on issues they face.
• Over time, this process will help to earn the trust of employees and their belief in the organization’s vested interest in their well-being which will lead to boosted morale.
• Hafey also recommends developing an employee-based safety committee to improve employee engagement and contribution.

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