Accelerating HSE Culture through HSE Leadership

In spite of many years of research and discussions on the importance of safety culture, this concept remains as pertinent today as any time before for the HSE performance of an organization. This paper describes an innovative approach to accelerating HSE culture in an organization based on the concept that mangers, particularly senior managers, through their influence on employees, can strongly affect the HSE performance and HSE culture of an organization. For this influence to be beneficial to the organization, managers need to consistently demonstrate behaviors and characteristics of strong HSE leadership. When senior managers accept ownership of HSE, and set and consistently motivate towards clear HSE expectations, other managers, and then supervisors and ultimately employees will consistently follow. An HSE leadership program for senior managers was developed, utilizing findings from previous psychological research on the role of managerial leadership in determining workplace safety outcomes and the application of the Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence model. The aim of the project was to increase HSE leadership by senior and middle managers and thereby to accelerate the development of a strong HSE culture. A process of remote coaching was implemented following completion of the HSE leadership academy to support senior and middle managers with the application of HSE leadership behaviors in the workplace. Remote coaching was designed to increase the application of HSE leadership behaviors and to support the creation of habitual HSE leadership behaviors. This paper discusses the HSE leadership academy and its psychological research basis, remote coaching, preliminary findings and critical aspects for success. Given the inherent HSE risk of our industry, it is proposed that HSE leadership training based on psychological research and the use of remote coaching can offer value to our industry as a means to meet the evolving challenges of protecting people, assets and the environment.