Safety Leadership at Shell. Examples of Leadership Development in Joint Ventures

Evolution of Safety Culture: From Procedures to the Human Factor

The development of a safety culture in large industrial companies is a continuous process that requires a review of established approaches. In modern industry, it is not enough to simply implement strict rules and procedures. Practice shows that even with advanced HSE management systems in place, incidents continue to occur if the fundamental aspects of human behavior and working conditions are not taken into account. Tatiana Bobrovitskaya, General Manager of Health, Safety and Environment for Russia at Shell, examines the evolution of the company's approaches to safety, focusing on the role of senior management and new management concepts.

Using the negative experience of other companies as an example (in particular, the introduction of robotics in Amazon warehouses), the speaker shows how a bias towards business performance at the expense of employee care leads to a sharp increase in injury rates. The presence of formal procedures and HSE departments does not compensate for excessive workloads, overtime, and a lack of genuine care for employee well-being. This highlights the critical importance of top management involvement in creating a safe working environment.

Shell's New Paradigm: Human Performance and Learning Mindset

Shell, which pioneered many industry standards (such as the Goal Zero concept and Life-Saving Rules), is moving towards a new wave of safety culture development. The presentation details an approach based on the concepts of Human Performance and Learning Mindset.

• Acknowledging the inevitability of human error → Why it matters: Perfect people do not exist, and mistakes will happen even with strict adherence to procedures. → How it works: The focus shifts from trying to completely eliminate errors to minimizing their consequences and creating systems that are resilient to the human factor.
• Abandoning strict injury rate KPIs → Why it matters: Set injury targets (lagging indicators) often encourage the concealment of incidents rather than their prevention. → How it works: The company is shifting to proactive indicators aimed at preventing incidents, while statistics continue to be kept for trend analysis but are not used as a punitive tool.
• Creating a psychologically safe environment → Why it matters: The fear of punishment blocks open discussion of problems and potential risks. → How it works: A culture is formed where employees are not afraid to report incidents and near misses, which allows lessons to be learned and more serious accidents to be prevented.

Safety Leader Competencies

The role of senior management is not limited to allocating resources to the HSE department. Safety leadership requires specific competencies and continuous personal involvement.

• Understanding the risks and consequences of operational decisions → Why it matters: Well-intentioned decisions (e.g., extending shifts to reduce COVID-19 risks) can lead to unintended consequences (increased injury rates due to fatigue). → How it works: A leader must analyze the impact of business decisions on safety and take compensatory measures.
• Focus on High Potential Incidents → Why it matters: Incidents that did not result in injuries but had the potential for a fatal outcome (e.g., dropped objects) indicate systemic failures. → How it works: Top management personally reviews the investigation results of such incidents to implement corrective actions across the entire organization.
• Proper response to incidents → Why it matters: Scapegoating destroys trust and encourages the concealment of facts. → How it works: The leader primarily shows care for the victim and their family, takes responsibility, and focuses on finding the systemic causes of the failure.

Translating Safety Culture in Joint Ventures

A particular challenge is the development of a safety culture in joint ventures, where different corporate cultures and shareholder approaches collide. The speaker examines the mechanisms for influencing safety through the board of directors level.

• Discussing safety at the shareholder level → Why it matters: This allows setting a unified development vector for the joint venture, despite differences in the mentality of the parent companies. → How it works: Safety issues are included in the agenda of every board of directors meeting, and joint sessions are held for the top management of shareholder companies to share best practices.
• Unified standards for contractors → Why it matters: Contractors perform a significant portion of high-risk work, and their culture directly affects overall performance. → How it works: The company's requirements and approaches are communicated to the senior management of contractor organizations, ensuring their involvement in achieving common safety goals.

What you will learn from this webinar:

• Why strict injury KPIs can harm safety culture and what to replace them with?
• How do the concepts of Human Performance and Learning Mindset change the approach to incident investigation?
• What 5 habits distinguish an effective industrial safety leader?
• How to respond to incidents properly so that employees stop hiding them?
• How to influence the level of safety in joint ventures through the board of directors?