In early 2009, leaders from ConocoPhillips Canada heard international safety management expert Dr. Bruce Staley speak at a conference in Houston, and they come home energized to use his Advanced Safety Auditing (ASA) program to improve safety performance throughout the company.
ASA is a practical technique based on leadership being active in the workplace and visibly reinforcing the behaviors they expect. Leaders go to where the work is happening which sends a powerful message to employees that leaders are interested in safety.
ASA is about treating people well, delivering clear vision and inspiring people, and it has helped ConocoPhillips achieve a step change in safety performance.
After working with Dr. Staley to implement ASA, Western Canada Gas Drilling achieved a 61 per cent reduction in its year-over-year Total Recordable Injury rate (TRIR). The rate dropped from 2.34 in December 2008 to 0.92 in December 2009.
“Our overall safety performance improved markedly with ASA,” says Darryl Hass “We had a recordable rate of 0.74 in 2009 which was a 24 per cent improvement over 2008, and we are working to continue that trend in 2010,” he says.
Implementing ASA started with training frontline leaders on how to have “high impact” safety conversations with their teams and ensure their expectations were clearly understood and addressed.
ConocoPhillip’s senior leaders were trained in the program, ensuring their specific commitment to the program permeated all levels of the organization. They talked about their support on video and these messages were broadcast in ASA training sessions as well as to the broader organization to help demonstrate that senior leaders are firmly behind the program.
Both employees and contractors from drillers to senior managers were trained in ASA. New workers on the rigs get coaching and mentoring and the role of safety coaches in the field have been enhanced.
So far, more than 240 managers and front line supervisors have been trained in the program. There have been approximately 1,000 ASAs recorded to-date by Drilling, there are weekly and monthly safety meetings in all rigs and with main contractors and expanded “safety stand-downs” maintain safety awareness with crews. “Implementing ASA and changing an entire company’s culture was no simple task,” says Darryl Hass. “In some cases, getting people to reframe their approach to leadership presented the biggest challenge. But using small, everyday actions and face-to-face communication, we are raising awareness and engaging employees in safety solutions.”
In 2010, leaders will go out and perform ASAs, track them and make it part of the management system. ConocoPhillips will also use ASAs as a leading metric to start describing what proactive behaviours are being made that prevent incidents. If there are recurring themes, the company can identified where changes need to be made.