Creating Safety - the wiki

is the way a person spontaneously think and feel about health, safety and environment. This personal safety mindset is at the basis of everyone’s way of doing, from the operators in the field to the managers in their leadership styles. Individual’s safety mindsets feed the organization’s safety culture ,  and vice-versa, moving everyone from a  “have to” to a “want to”  attitude. 

is “the way we do things around here”. It is the shared way we do, perceive and think about health, safety and environment. The maturity of an organization's safety culture can be represented on a 5 steps ladder: from low or pathological, to intermediate or reactive and high. Reinforcing the safety culture means moving beyond rule-based safety (HSE rules, procedures, systems) to make safety a spontaneous, genuine value. Safety climate assessment gives a snapshot of the organization’s safety culture.

is the shared perception of the  safety culture  by people,  the way they perceive and express how the organization deals with HSE, and the strength and style of the prevailing   safety leadership . The safety climate can be measured via a  safety climate  assessment. A Safety Climate Assessment is a process consisting in gathering perceptions of people about safety via a combination of quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interviews) analysis to understand the current culture and identify   improvement actions.

can be illustrated on a 5 level ladder of safety culture advancement :

- Pathological (By-passing or avoidance of safety),
- Reactive (limited compliance),
- Calculative (compliance & system obsessed).
- Proactive (focussed on human factors)
- Generative (safety is fully embedded or integrated)

Each step or level can be shortly described with a number of aspects of safety and is strong related with the  leadership style . The ultimate goal is to get the right mix of different leadership styles (see table)   

How we do it right :  shifting from  preventing accidents  to “creating safety” means a reinforced focus on “how to make it right”, so making people central. Doing it right is the  Safety leadership  style expected from Managers in order to go further in creating safety.

is the ability of the Management to create a strong safety culture. This requires acts, visibility,  safety dialogues , … and the promotion of  positive attitudes and behavior  in general and regarding HSE in particular. This leadership is necessary to move beyond a   “have-to”  safety culture:  Reinforcing the safety culture relies on a safety leadership style where managers act as mentors and demonstrate genuine care for all.

are a key element of   Syensqo ’s excellence plan  started in 2012 . In order to “create safety”, the way these safety visits are carried out is key: They should be  Leadership safety dialogues  ,  seen as opportunities for leaders to engage  people in safety and understand what is going on in the field, rather than an audit or a  “checking the box” process. 

 must be interactive and create a feeling of trust, thanks to  positive  attitudes and behaviors :  show interest by asking to explain the ongoing work, actively listen without interrupting,  encourage dialogue through open questions, reinforce the person’s commitment by asking for potential improvement actions, …

  Creating safety  implies to shift from a “have to” to a “want to” mindset. In this culture, rules are not obeyed just to be compliant, but to be safe, to protect people, neighbours, the environment. This requires to move the organization beyond a  rule-based safety .   Attitudes and behaviors  by the management and by all are key.

HSE management is usually focussed on avoiding “excursions” such as accidents, risk exposure, non compliance. Such management is often mainly  rule-based and system based .  “ Creating safety ” goes beyond prevention program, systems and tools, with a clear focus onpeople and the will of everyone to ensure the safety of all.  Leading indicators  that drive performance are privileged over accident monitoring to drive action.

such as trust, openness, exemplarity, feedback, coaching, care, support, motivation, ethics, ...  All these must be promoted so that the  safety leadership  feeds a stronger  safety culture.

Rules, procedures, systems (and continuously adding more) may in fact jeopardize safety: This is because people become “rule obsessed” at the price of alertness and understanding of the real risk they are exposed to. Safety is seen as a burden and an obligation. So people may become less engaged in safety:  They also have the false confidence that just respecting rules ensures their safety and are less prepared to face unexpected situations ;  “Creating safety ” is the way out. It triggers the ability to escape from the pitfall of the “ what to do” (procedures, equipment, rules, corrective actions, prevention…) to “how we do it right”.  Rules should not be forgotten, on the contrary, but we must understand that rules by themselves are not enough.     

launched in 2012, it includes the following elements:   Safety Day,  Leadership Safety Visits, personal objective related to HSE, HSE Objectives for the entity,  root cause analyses of high potential severity FAA/near misses and corrective actions.  Syensqo’s new “ Creating safety ” approach puts an additional focus on  mindsets

accidents and deviations result from the failure to ensure a good safety management. Just managing “results” means managing failures contrary to managing the processes that ultimately bring the results.  Creating safety  thus relies on performance indicators that not just measure results (monitoring accidents, learning from failures and non-compliances, looking backwards) but more importantly monitor what “leads” safety (operators involved in improvement actions, training, dialogues, …), what is put in place to create safety  (beyond merely managing risks ).