Demands on the Oil & Gas industry are driving continual improvement in Health, Safety & Environment (HSE) performance, which in turn the business performance of an organization. It has been widely accepted in the industry that a structured safety culture and its implementation coupled with visible leadership and commitment directly affects HSE performance. Developing Safety Culture is a complex process, and yet it is inevitable for any organization to excel. An Organization's safety culture reflects the leadership & commitment, and values that employees share regarding HS&E.
Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), one of the premier Oil &Gas companies in the Gulf region, gives top most commitment to HSE and considers HSE as a key strategic objective of its business strategy. KOC recognized the importance of Safety Culture in not only just delivering the best decisions by the Leadership, but involves commitment to the implementation and practicing, which will form core pillars for establishing very good Safety Culture. KOC strongly believes that Safety Culture coupled with leadership and commitment act as fundamentals to HSE performance, and to business success.
Safety Culture is considered as one of the key constituents for delivering top class HSE performance in Oil & Gas Industry. This is a strong challenge for a company that is truly multicultural, employing more than 40,000 personnel (including Contractors) from over 65 different nationalities, spread through every continent of the globe. This paper describes four indicators of safety culture: Leadership, Two-way communication, Employee Involvement, Learning Culture & Attitude towards blame. These indicators have been chosen after we started saying "How can we implement Company's HSE Management System effectively that creates a culture in which continual HSE performance is achieved and safety is everyone's concern". A review of the existing safety culture was undertaken to identify details of appropriate criteria against which company performance has been assessed. Also it presents the salient findings of the existing phase of the organization (WK Fields of KOC), as a result of above four indicators and results achieved in terms of HSE performance so far.
