The Image of the HSE Function as a Tool for Safety Culture Development

Nornickel's Experience

Workplace safety effectiveness depends not only on the quality of requirements, procedures, and technical barriers. Equally important is how employees perceive the industrial safety and occupational health function itself—as inspectors or as partners capable of helping operations work more safely.

At Nornickel, managing the image of the HSE function has become an independent workstream in developing safety culture.

Safety Is Defined Not Only by the System, But Also by the Attitude Toward It

In a large industrial company, safety is ensured through many interconnected elements: technical barriers, procedures, a risk management system, training, oversight, and the work of HSE professionals.

However, the effectiveness of the entire system ultimately manifests in the behavior of the individual. The worker decides whether to stop unsafe work or continue it. The supervisor shapes the team's attitude toward safety requirements. And the HSE specialist, through daily interaction with operations, largely determines whether safety is perceived solely as a system of restrictions or as an essential condition for effective work.

Therefore, safety culture initiatives at Nornickel are built around people and their behavior. One of the key insights has been the understanding that employees' attitude toward the HSE function directly affects the function's own ability to drive change on the shop floor.

HSE Image as a Management Category

The word "image" in the context of workplace safety is sometimes seen as a matter for internal communications. In practice, it represents a much more significant management category.

Imagine two scenarios. In the first, an HSE specialist is perceived solely as someone who comes to the operational site to find a violation and assign blame. In the second, they are seen as an expert whom workers can approach with a problem, discuss a risk, get professional assistance, and jointly find a solution.

The formal authority of the specialist may be identical, yet the nature of interaction with operations will differ fundamentally.

When the function is perceived purely as a policing body, workers try to minimize contact with it. A potentially hazardous situation may go undiscussed until it turns into a violation or an incident.

In a partnership model, it becomes possible to receive information much earlier—at the stage of doubt, inconvenience, potential risk, or an unsafe task.

Therefore, developing the image of HSE is not an attempt to make the function more popular. It is about creating conditions under which HSE professionals and operational staff can influence safety more effectively.

From Policing to Partnership

Historically, the occupational safety function in many industrial organizations was formed primarily as an oversight body. And monitoring compliance with requirements remains a vital part of the safety system.

However, if the role of HSE in the eyes of workers is reduced solely to enforcement, the function becomes an external policing party to operations. Meanwhile, modern safety requires joint hazard identification, task analysis, problem-solving, safe skill development, and incident prevention.

Therefore, one of the development areas for the HSE function at Nornickel focuses on shifting its perception—from an "enforcer" to a helper and professional partner to operations.

This is not about abandoning strict standards. An HSE specialist must monitor mandatory requirements and respond to violations. What changes is the balance of roles: it is not enough to simply record a problem—it is essential to help solve it.

What Shapes the Image of the HSE Function

Since 2023, Nornickel has systematically collected feedback on how managers and frontline workers in operational units perceive the HSE function. This information is used to design programs that improve the function's effectiveness.

At the same time, it was important to move away from the generic question, "Do you have a positive or negative attitude toward HSE?" Such answers are virtually impossible to use for management decision-making.

Instead, the perception of the function is evaluated across four specific factors.

• Communication. How do HSE specialists interact with workers? Can they explain requirements clearly? Is there a dialogue, or is communication built solely on citations and reprimands?
• Accessibility. Can a worker approach an HSE specialist with a real operational issue and receive professional support?
• Value. Do workers see practical value in the function's work? Do its actions help make a specific task or workplace safer?
• Decisions and Actions. How capable are specialists of making professional and appropriate safety decisions?

In this way, the abstract concept of image is translated into concrete areas of management focus.

Image Starts with the Behavior of HSE Professionals

It is impossible to change operations' attitude toward the function through a communications campaign alone. If you talk about partnership while demonstrating a purely punitive model of behavior during face-to-face interactions, the effect will be the exact opposite.

Therefore, working on the image starts primarily within the function itself.

Nornickel is developing a comprehensive set of initiatives: professional development for HSE staff, operational placements on the shop floor, identification of unsafe tasks, rules of engagement with operations, a feedback mechanism, and an HSE function rating.

It is fundamentally important for every specialist to understand that any interaction with operations affects not only the resolution of a specific issue, but also workers' willingness to reach out to HSE in the future.

If a worker receives meaningful help, the likelihood that they will proactively report a problem next time increases. If instead of help they receive only a formal reprimand, the natural reaction will be to minimize future contact.

Thus, the communication culture of HSE specialists itself becomes part of the safety culture.

An HSE Specialist Must Understand Operations

Another important element is reducing the distance between the function and operations.

Safety requirements cannot be effectively applied outside the operational context. An HSE specialist must understand not only regulatory requirements, but also the technological process, actual working conditions, existing constraints, and the root causes of unsafe behavior.

That is why operational placements on the shop floor serve as one of the key staff development tools.

Their purpose goes beyond simply expanding technical knowledge. The better a specialist understands actual operational work, the higher the likelihood that their solutions will be perceived as professional and practical.

The authority of the function is built not only on powers documented in policies, but on the ability to understand operational challenges and propose solutions that simultaneously ensure safety and allow the production task to be completed.

Feedback as a Management Tool

Giving workers the opportunity to evaluate their interactions with HSE specialists holds special significance.

The company is developing a rating system for the function that gathers feedback directly from the shop floor. For the management team, this provides visibility into aspects that are difficult to detect through traditional top-down reporting lines.

A manager may highly rate a specialist's technical knowledge, while frontline workers may experience difficulties with their communication, accessibility, or feedback quality.

Furthermore, the very logic of the relationship changes. The HSE specialist ceases to be the only one evaluating others. Operations also gain the ability to assess the quality of the function's work.

Delivering Value, Not Just Pleasing Operations

When working on image, it is crucial not to confuse the goal.

The objective of HSE is not to get a high rating at any cost. A professional safety decision sometimes objectively restricts production. A specialist may be obligated to stop work or take a stance that is inconvenient for a worker or supervisor.

Therefore, a positive image does not mean an absence of conflict.

The main question lies elsewhere: does the worker understand the reasons behind the decision, consider the HSE specialist competent and consistent, see the practical value of their actions, and feel willing to approach them again?

It is essential for the function to maintain a balance between partnership and professional rigor.

HSE Image and Safety Culture Are Directly Linked

Developing the function's image does not exist in isolation from broader safety culture efforts.

To move toward a more mature culture, it is not enough for HSE specialists to perform their duties well. Workers themselves must be willing to report hazards, refuse unsafe work, discuss potential issues, and participate in resolving them.

And this requires trust in the interaction.

Workers need to know that reporting an issue will lead not to a search for someone to blame, but above all to a search for a solution.

This is precisely where image stops being a communications matter and becomes a core factor of safety culture.

From Control to Influence

At a certain stage of safety system maturity, a fundamental question arises: where do the limits of control end?

It is impossible to place an HSE specialist next to every worker and monitor every single task. A mature system must create conditions where safe decisions are made even when no safety officer is around.

Consequently, the role of the function becomes broader. It must not only monitor compliance, but also influence the environment in which people make decisions: through supervisors, training, process design, motivation, personal example, and the quality of daily interactions.

And here, image is directly tied to the function's ability to influence.

One can possess extensive formal authority and still have limited influence. Conversely, professional competence, consistency, and trust make it possible to impact a situation long before the need arises to use administrative enforcement.

From Trust to Safe Behavior

Nornickel's experience shows that the image of the HSE function should be viewed not as a communications or PR exercise, but as a practical tool for workplace safety management.

The goal is not to make the function popular with workers. What matters is that HSE specialists are understandable to operations, accessible, professional, and helpful; that workers see a clear link between HSE actions and real safety improvements; and that engagement begins before a potential issue turns into an incident.

Achieving this requires simultaneously developing the professional competencies of HSE staff, their understanding of operations, communication quality, rules of engagement with workers, feedback mechanisms, and the ability to see identified issues through to resolution.

When this happens, the role of the function transforms. It remains firm where safety demands it, but ceases to be perceived solely as a policing system. HSE becomes an operational partner and a center of professional expertise capable of helping managers and workers identify and eliminate risks.

This model of interaction creates the conditions under which safety becomes a shared responsibility of the HSE function, supervisors, and frontline workers.