The Hearts and Minds Program: Understanding HSE Culture Patrick T.W. Hudson; Patrick T.W. Hudson Manchester University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Dianne Parker; Dianne Parker Manchester University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Gerard C. van der Graaf Gerard C. van der Graaf Shell International Exploration and Production B.V. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Paper presented at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2002. Paper Number: SPE-73938-MS https://doi.org/10.2118/73938-MS Published: March 20 2002 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Get Permissions Search Site Citation Hudson, Patrick T.W., Parker, Dianne, and Gerard C. van der Graaf. "The Hearts and Minds Program: Understanding HSE Culture." Paper presented at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2002. doi: https://doi.org/10.2118/73938-MS Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll ProceedingsSociety of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)SPE International Conference and Exhibition on Health, Safety, Environment, and Sustainability Search Advanced Search AbstractThe Hearts and Minds program is intended to move the basis for HSEperformance past the mechanical implementation of HSE Management Systems. Thispaper describes an evolutionary approach to HSE culture and reports on abrochure that enables organisations and individuals to understand the HSEculture and their personal behaviours in the context of the culture. The papergives examples of characterisations of organisational and personal behavioursand discusses how improvement can be generated and maintained inorganisations.IntroductionSociety requires increasingly high standards for Health, Safety andEnvironment in the Oil and Gas industry. Prior to the Piper Alpha disasterthere was an unstructured approach to improvement based upon trying to ensurethat commitment is turned into performance. The Piper Alpha disaster led to theobligatory development of safety management systems. Safety management, implemented in a systematic approach, has since been generalized to HSEManagement Systems (HSE-MS) as the skills required to implement such systemsimproved. The problem with all these approaches has always lain in theirtop-down nature; commitment at the top has to be driven down to ensure that theworkforce behaves safely and responsibly, both in their own interests, in theinterest of the organisation of the wider community of stakeholders. Despiterequirements made by regulatory bodies, real workforce involvement has oftenproven difficult in practice and continued management effort has been required. The implementation of HSE management systems has tended to be mechanical, setting and meeting minimal requirements, but not going further. The result hasbeen initial improvements in performance that has plateaued and has requiredradical new approaches to develop. The question is: How is further improvementpossible beyond HSE-MS? The answer appears to lie in the active and willinginvolvement of all concerned, going beyond the merely perfunctory to activeinvolvement.The Hearts and Minds program is intended to move the basis for effective HSEperformance past the mechanical implementation of HSE management systems andreliance upon top-down control of the workforce1. The original remitfor the research program was to create a workforce that is sufficiently wellmotivated to behave in safe and responsible ways without external control. Sucha workforce would be intrinsically motivated to act in ways that were safe, environmentally responsible and fundamentally healthy. This is a large andrather nebulous target, so it has been operationalised as the development of atrue culture of safety. Such a culture is one in which HSE is part of theself-image of all involved in the enterprise, from top to bottom. The Heartsand Minds Program has been aimed at the development of such a culture withinShell1.Organisational culture is not a simple concept2,3 and hastraditionally been notoriously difficult to define. Safety culture, with itslogical extension of an HSE culture, is equally hard to define. One concept, safety climate has been coined to cover the expectations and perceptions of theworkforce4, but the idea of a culture is one that only partiallyoverlaps with climate. Culture represents the unspoken, and often invisible, sets of beliefs and assumptions that everyone shares, climate refers to theexperience that must be tempered by the expectations5. Culturereflects "what we do round here" Climate reflects "How we feel about whathappens round here". We have found that measures of safety culture andreadiness to change, as a measure of the climate, are uncorrelated6, implying that climate refers to the extent to which current expectations aboutsafety are being met, but that such scores are independent of thoseexpectations. What might make a workforce happy in a Reactive culture (seebelow for the definitions), would be regarded as unsatisfactory in a Proactiveculture. Keywords: workforce, accident, upstream oil & gas, hazard, hsse reporting, safety culture, personal behaviour, management system, hse culture, dimension Subjects: HSSE & Social Responsibility Management, Safety, HSSE management systems, HSSE reporting This content is only available via PDF. 2002. Society of Petroleum Engineers You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.
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Hudson et al. (2002) studied this question.