Abstract
Despite a strong safety performance during construction, commissioning and early operations, in 2012 the Pearl GTL community embarked on a safety leadership development journey. Following a culture sensing survey the Site Leaders acknowledged that the safety culture at the plant was not what they perceived it to be. A period of discovery was undertaken to fully examine and understand the current safety culture; this was done through listening and enquiry deep into the organization with a deliberate intention to not react to the insights with actions until a full picture emerged. Only after this period of discovery and reflection did the leadership team start to envisage and articulate the desired safety culture for their community. It was recognized that doing more of what we knew, such as enhancing the management system and implementing short term campaigns would not sustainably lead us to Goal Zero.
The leaders took a bold decision to empower a group of high capacity individuals from across the organization to work with them to develop a long term improvement plan. This team - consisting of Engineers, Production Specialists, HSSE professionals, HR and Business Improvement personnel - worked for 18months in partnership with Site Leaders. The focus of the effort was on developing safety leadership at all levels by designing unique engagements, developing innovative tools, building capability and implementing new skills and today the improvement plan is making significant progress.
It is recognised that no single group in an organization, be it the senior leaders, supervisors nor the front line can impact the culture on its own and it takes a cross business, multi-level approach with consistent steer and commitment for the long term to be able to affect and develop the desired safety culture. In this paper, case studies and the positive Business impact at various levels in the organization will be discussed. The case studies will focus on the design of a unique programme for front line safety leadership development and how this evolved to include supervisors, how developing a cadre of Safety Leadership Coaches is affecting senior leaders and the importance of incorporating all the site programmes and initiatives within the culture of safety leadership.
It is over 2 ½ years since the last Lost Time Injury at Pearl GTL and visitors to the site tell us that there is a sense of community and workforce engagement that they rarely experience elsewhere, particularly for a plant with a short operational history. The same visitors are energized by what they see and reflect how they can envisage elements of the safety culture improvement plan at Pearl GTL being implemented in their own organisations.
