Operational Efficiency and Safety: Is There a Compromise?

Context: Why Safety and Efficiency Often Conflict

The question of balance between operational efficiency and occupational safety is one of the most acute in any production. Often, these two areas are perceived as opposing forces: production workers strive to fulfill the plan and earn money, while HSE specialists aim to stop processes to ensure compliance with rules. In her presentation, Svetlana Shuvalova, Plant Director at KNAUF Insulation, examines how to overcome this resistance and move from conflict to cooperation.

Interaction Models: From Avoidance to Cooperation

Using examples from famous movie clips, the speaker demonstrates how various models of interaction between production and HSE manifest in real corporate life:

• Conflict Avoidance: formal agreement with safety requirements without a real intention to fulfill them. This is postponing the problem "for later," which inevitably leads to the accumulation of risks.
• Rivalry: aggressively pushing one's own interests. Production may ignore rules for the sake of the plan, while HSE may block work without considering business goals. Such a struggle destroys trust.
• Accommodation: formal execution of top-down regulations without understanding their essence. Personnel simply adapt to new rules, which reduces their real effectiveness.
• Compromise: reaching agreements that only partially satisfy both sides. This is an incomplete solution that may lead to resistance again in the future.
• Cooperation: the highest level of interaction, where operational efficiency and safety go parallel and together. Leadership plays a key role here: the manager evaluates resources, unites the team, and gives clear instructions in risk conditions.

How to Achieve Cooperation in Practice

The presentation details the steps necessary to build effective cooperation between departments:

• Right Goals from the Top: management must set mutually supportive and unifying goals so that analysis and actions are truly useful.
• Motivation and Incentives: it is important to find the right ways to engage personnel and convey the importance of complying with safety rules to everyone.
• No Blame Culture: injuries and accidents are not the fault of a specific worker, but a problem of the management system and underestimated risks. Management errors are the main cause of incidents.
• Leading Indicators: revising views on statistics and selecting indicators that help maintain and develop the safety system, rather than just recording past failures.

Tools for Personnel Engagement

Answering audience questions, the speaker notes the importance of tools that engage production personnel in safety issues. One such tool is multi-level audits, where workers themselves monitor their areas from a safety perspective. This helps avoid conflicts and achieve real cooperation.

What You Will Learn from This Webinar:

• How to diagnose the current interaction model between production and HSE in your company?
• Why a compromise between efficiency and safety is not always the best solution?
• What steps management should take to transition from rivalry to cooperation?
• How to properly motivate personnel to comply with safety requirements?
• What tools help engage production personnel in risk management at their workplaces?