Development of Safety Culture

The Limit of Traditional Control and the Transition to Conscious Safety

The development of occupational safety management systems naturally faces the limit of the effectiveness of traditional supervisory mechanisms. Statistics show that working conditions cause incidents in only 4% of cases, while 96% are related to unsafe actions by workers. Ensuring continuous control over every employee is physically impossible and economically unfeasible. In his presentation, Evgeny Spirin, Head of the HSE Department at Gazprom Dobycha Yamburg LLC, analyzes the practical experience of transitioning from strict supervision to forming a conscious attitude towards safety, where an employee chooses a safe method of performing a task even in the absence of inspectors.

Tools for Behavior Change: Audits and Near Misses

To transform the staff's attitude towards risks, the company implemented a set of practical tools shifting the focus from investigating incidents that have occurred to anticipating and preventing them.

Behavioral Safety Audits (BSA)

The speaker examines in detail the mechanics of conducting behavioral audits, the goal of which is to identify and immediately correct unsafe actions. The key decision was to involve not only HSE specialists in the process, but also line managers and employees from the management reserve. This allows cultivating safe work values among future managers. During a BSA, the observer evaluates the workplace and the employee's actions, providing immediate feedback, which becomes a development factor for both sides of the dialogue.

Registration of Near Misses

The second crucial element was the system for identifying undesirable events that could have led to damage but did not materialize. Employees were given the opportunity to independently record such situations through the corporate portal or using paper cards (for personnel without PC access). The initiator of the report determines the hazard level (high, medium, low) and appoints a person responsible for eliminating the risk. This approach works as an informational analogue of shift-by-shift production control, developing the personal responsibility of each employee.

Assessing Commitment and Integration into the Motivation System

For the safety culture not to remain an exclusively declarative concept, it must be measurable. The company formalized the competence "Commitment to Safety Culture," which is integrated into the overall personnel assessment model. Annually, during interviews, managers and specialists are evaluated on this scale, and the results directly affect the variable part of their salary and career planning. To monitor the effectiveness of the processes themselves, 27 key performance indicators (KPIs) were introduced, including the coverage of behavioral safety audits and employee activity in reporting risks.

What you will learn from this webinar:

• How to overcome the plateau in reducing injury rates when traditional control methods stop working?
• How to organize the collection of near-miss data from line personnel without computer access?
• How to measure an employee's commitment to safety culture and link this indicator to the financial motivation system?
• Which KPIs objectively reflect staff involvement in occupational safety processes?
• How to use behavioral safety audits to prepare the management personnel reserve?