The recently released draft HSE Strategy1 lays great emphasis on the importance of strong leadership in managing workplace health and safety, as does the Executive’s guidance on directors’ duties, published a few years ago. But a recent survey2 found that only 25 per cent of companies are aware of this guidance, so it is clear that this message has yet to fully filter through. Neil Budworth and Teresa Budworth provide a reminder of why senior management must not be passive
The consequences of a lack of strong leadership in championing health and safety in the workplace are very apparent; virtually every investigation into a major accident has highlighted a failure to manage health and safety effectively as one of the causes or contributory factors. The inquiries into Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Piper Alpha, and the Esso Longford gas-plant explosion all found that failures at managerial levels were at least as important as technical failure and human error in causing the accidents.
The 2003 HSE report into three major incidents and a massive fire at BP’s Grangemouth refinery in Scotland3 concluded that a series of management failures was responsible for life-threatening accidents at the complex. The HSE found that standards had been allowed to slip, and management had failed to abide by the law. At group level, BP “did not detect and intervene early enough on deteriorating performance”.
In its report on another BP blast — at the Texas City refinery, which killed 15 in 2005 — the Baker Panel concluded that it could have been prevented if the company had learned the lesson of the Grangemouth disaster.4 It made an explicit criticism of the leadership provided by Lord Browne and the UK-based global board. It stated: “In hindsight, the Panel believes that if Browne had demonstrated comparable leadership on and commitment to process safety, that leadership and commitment would likely have resulted in a higher level of process safety performance in BP’s US refineries. As observed in the 2003 Conference Board Report on best practices in corporate safety and health, ‘[i]f the top executive believes in the worth of the strategies, sets expectations for other managers, follows through on those expectations and commits appropriate resources shared beliefs, norms, and practices will evolve’.”
The message is clear: the directors and board members set the values of the organisation.
Strong and active leadership
In 2003, the HSE commissioned the University of Aberdeen to undertake research into the impact of leadership at different organisational levels on workplace safety.5 For senior managers, the key factors and values identified as having a positive impact on workplace safety were:
The issue of leadership style is being considered further in a new research project on senior managers’ safety leadership in the oil and gas industry, sponsored by the Energy Institute. The preliminary literature review6 points to a correlation between leaders with transformational styles and lower injury rates, and the perception by their subordinates of a high commitment to health and safety.
Transformational leadership has been defined as: “a process of influencing in which leaders change their associates’ awareness of what is important, and move them to see themselves and the opportunities and challenges of their environment in a new way. Transformational leaders are proactive: they seek to optimise individual, group, and organisational development and innovation, not just achieve performance ‘at expectations’. They convince their associates to strive for higher levels of potential, as well as higher levels of moral and ethical standards.”7
Transformational leaders demonstrate their commitment to health and safety by ensuring that it is a value reflected in all of their decisions, actions and communications. It is obviously important that the health and safety ramifications of investment in new plant, premises, processes, or products are taken into account before decisions are made, but such decisions can also be an opportunity to innovate and strive for higher standards, and communicate the importance of safety in the process.
Effective health and safety management demands strong leadership. The most powerful action a leader can take in relation to setting the health and safety standard is to demonstrate active, or ‘felt’ commitment to health and safety — one so strong that it is felt by the workforce and cannot be doubted.
Though most directors and senior managers believe broadly that health and safety is ‘a good thing’, some don’t always appreciate what developing good standards means on a day-to-day basis. The management of health and safety is not a passive issue; it requires active intervention by senior managers. The good news is that actions taken to improve health and safety standards within a business will almost certainly improve productivity and profitability as well.
Any board needs information to guide them in directing the business. In the case of health and safety, it is important that the board not only collects information on past performance, but also that leading indicators are used to provide assurance that safety-critical controls are in place, and effective.
It is good governance practice that any board of directors reviews the information that it receives on all issues on a regular basis. Board reports should give directors the information they need to assess that the business is being managed effectively and to take corrective action, where necessary. The health and safety information that a board receives is often presented as bland statistics, but details of real people and the injury they suffered may reinforce what is important.
References
1 HSE (2008): The Health and Safety of Great Britain: Be part of the solution — www.hse.gov.uk/strategy/index.htm
2 See SHP March 09, News, p6
3 Visit www.hse.gov.uk/comah/bpgrange
4 Visit www.hse.gov.uk/leadership/bakerreport.pdf
5 HSE (2003): The role of managerial leadership in determining workplace safety outcomes, RR044, HSE Books
6 Reid, H; Flin, R; Mearns, K and Bryden, R (2008): ‘Influence from the top: senior managers and safety leadership,’ prepared for presentation at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety, and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production held in Nice, France, 15—17 April 2008
7 Bass, B and Avolio, B (2002): Multi-factor Leadership — Questionnaire Feedback Report © 1996
Neil Budworth is corporate health and safety manager for E.ON UK, and Teresa Budworth is CEO of NEBOSH. This article is based on a paper delivered at the Third Arab Health and Safety Conference in Bahrain in November 2008.
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