The "reflective thinking" competency is among the top essential skills for a modern leader. It is the ability to learn from experience — both positive and negative, one's own and others' — and to incorporate the best and most useful practices into one's work.
If you are reading this article — congratulations, you possess this competency. After all, we come to the HSE platform to borrow the experience of other companies in supporting and developing safety culture, as well as to share our own.
In the context of industrial safety and HSE, the importance of this skill is doubled. The ability to analyze incidents and risks, plan correct actions to prevent them in the future, gather best practices, and adapt them to your enterprise are mandatory conditions on the challenging path to zero injuries.
When recruiting team members, I always look at their horizons, interest in industry benchmarks, and proactive readiness to notice and implement the best and most modern solutions. We cultivate a similar approach within our team of safety culture trainers.
At Nornickel, we have had a safety culture trainer institute operating on a regular basis for two years. Every day, more than 500 line managers and workers undergo training in safe behavior and risk assessment at enterprises in the Norilsk region, the Kola Peninsula, and Zabaykalye.
The hundreds and thousands of kilometers separating the enterprise trainers are not an obstacle. We are always in touch and immediately share successful experiences. In addition to classic activities — workshops, masterclasses, methodological meetings, strategic sessions, projects, and trainer chats — we have included regular co-training in pairs, as well as supervision by experienced trainers with special training.
We have ensured an effective exchange of educational experience within the company. Now we have something to share with specialized trainers from other enterprises in the industry. And we are interested in seeing how these important processes are organized by others.
Therefore, we organized the first All-Russian Safety Culture Trainer Competition. It took place in September 2024 in Norilsk. The competition was organized by Nornickel's Health, Safety and Environment Department.
We succeeded in expanding the educational and informational perimeter of safety culture, as well as organizing a vibrant and useful event for trainers from Russian companies beyond the Arctic Circle. We saw how colleagues work, demonstrated our skills, exchanged life hacks, and were inspired by the experience of leaders and experts.
Our invitation was accepted by representatives from SIBUR, Irkutsk Oil Company, Severstal, Uralkali, Tatneft, and the Rosatom Technical Academy.
The three-day event included:
During the competition day, participants conducted 20 demo trainings in the categories "Training for Workers," "Training for Managers," and "Co-training." The expert jury included representatives from HSE departments and corporate universities of industry-leading companies, experienced business trainers, and psychologists. Each contestant received feedback on their performances.
A question may arise: "Why participate in a competition if I am already an established specialist, conducting trainings, with experience and a record in my employment history?" A competition is a challenge. If you are a professional, you will accept it. It is not always comfortable; it requires hard work and preparation, but nothing compares to the taste of victory.
In addition to prizes and gifts, all contestants received a "trainer's suitcase." In it, we packed the developments, findings, and life hacks of the trainer team.
In the title of the article, we featured the mysterious code "Safety" — 316. No, it's not what you immediately thought — the number of working days for an HSE specialist in a year!) It is the total experience of the safety trainer competition participants expressed in years.
Are you interested? Then join the second Safety Culture Trainer Professional Excellence Competition. We will hold it in August 2025. It will take place in the city of Monchegorsk on the Kola Peninsula.
Konstantin Ermolaev, Chief Manager of the Safety Culture Development Department at PJSC Norilsk Nickel, will tell you more about participation. Contact address: ermolaevkv@nornik.ru.