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This paper focuses on what it takes to create sustainable HSE performance. It outlines the journey that an Oil & Gas Producer in Central Europe has taken to create a HSE Culture where health, safety and environment are an integral part of business. Since September 2004 this E&P company has been on a journey to change its HSE culture. This has required new understanding of what safety leadership actually is and the very powerful role that leadership has in engaging the workforce to create a HSE Culture which is committed to an injury free workplace. The results achieved in HSE performance improvement that are presented in this paper are well documented through KPIs over a 5 year period. The business case and the commercial sustainability of the Safety Leadership approach is clearly presented through multi-million dollar savings. The experience of this change in approach is that it is sustainable and readily implemented; however, the fundamental principles are not well understood by many E&P companies. Many E&P companies are continuing to invest heavily in a flawed approach.

This paper is based on several long term studies in the energy industry designed to determine if there was a relationship between leadership practices, employee commitment and motivated effort. A survey methodology was used to identify and validate the variables that consistently impacted operational excellence and safety performance. Our research shows that employee engagement is a direct result of leadership practices. Where leadership practices promote and align company values and commitment to safety, the overall performance in both individual and organizational safety is significantly higher. Furthermore, the leadership that creates this increased performance also creates more highly engaged employees that outperform the competition in production, customer satisfaction and overall profitability. The linkages are these. The best leadership practices develop engaged employees. Engaged employees have strong feelings of collective and individual self-efficacy. Engaged employees were observed to have much higher commitment and alignment to the organization’s values and work practices. This high level of commitment and alignment subsequently led to higher performance outcomes. The paper goes on to describe what an organization needs to do to create those effective leadership practices. Our research suggests that behavioral based programs rarely succeed unless fully integrated into a values based safety culture.

Austria has produced oil for more than 60 years, typically from small and mature fields. Throughout the years a local safety culture developed which did not keep up with the developments in HSEQ in the international E&P industry. After several years of below average safety performance (10 year LTI = 11) and continued poor results in 2004 (13 accidents with a lost time of 878 days recorded in OMV Austria E&P for the first 10 months of 2004) we were committed to change our performance. Because of this poor safety performance a leadership initiative was started in September 2004 to change the attitude towards safety of all employees and increase our understanding of the leadership drivers and responsibilities for HSEQ. Management was trained on basic HSEQ knowledge and a management system roll out initiative including reporting tools and training was undertaken. A HSEQ leadership workshop was introduced. This workshop focused on the leadership and management aspects of individual intention, behaviour, culture and systems. Safety leadership and loss prevention teams were established and monthly meetings scheduled. The training and tools given to the 780 employees were accepted by most of them and the attitude changed quickly. First half year of 2005 only one accident with 4 days lost time needed to be recorded and the number of near miss and hazard reports increased considerably. The leadership approach employed has been to change the way all people in the organization think about safety. We recognised that we needed to change the culture; how we related to HSEQ – we needed to work on the thinking behind the behaviour. This paper will show how an intensive focus on HSEQ leadership is able to, within a short period of time, change the safety performance of a company.