CONVERSATIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOR BASED SAFETY AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU SWN HSE CULTURE SWN is filled with great people – truly the Right People doing the Right Things. That’s an exciting part of being here and it’s something that we all take pride in. Sometimes do you wonder if everyone feels the same way when it comes to health, safety and environmental (HSE) excellence? If you had to sum up our health, safety and environmental culture how would you describe it? Are we proactive or reactive? Are we aligned with what a preventable incident is compared to a non- preventable incident? Do we successfully manage production and safety – are they always compatible? Do we follow safety processes because of mandates and regulations or is it something that each of us wants to do?
Transcript
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOR BASED SAFETY AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU
SWN HSE CULTURE
SWN is filled with great people – truly the Right People doing the Right Things. That’s an exciting
part of being here and it’s something that we all take pride in. Sometimes do you wonder if
everyone feels the same way when it comes to health, safety and environmental (HSE) excellence?
If you had to sum up our health, safety and environmental culture how would you describe it? Are
we proactive or reactive? Are we aligned with what a preventable incident is compared to a non-
preventable incident? Do we successfully manage production and safety – are they always
compatible? Do we follow safety processes because of mandates and regulations or is it something
that each of us wants to do?
Most SWN employees, 90% to be exact, participated
in a recent Safety Perception Survey just so we as an
organization can better understand what our health,
safety and environmental culture really looks like right
now. We are grateful to all who took the survey. The
survey data as well as information from in-person
interviews will give us a quantitative assessment of our
HSE values, the state of our HSE management, and
the quality of key HSE practices. This will help us
define areas where we can gain leverage and results
from our initial efforts – the low hanging fruit.
The information we gather from the survey and
interviews will also help us develop a long-term plan to
align our culture to where we want to be in the future.
We will communicate survey and interview results
back to the organization in the April/May timeframe.
Long term plans will be shared through the year and
will continue to change and grow just as SWN changes
and grows.
At 90% participation rate we are one
of the best responding companies
who have ever taken the survey.
Our partner, DuPont Sustainable
Solutions, told us that a really good
response rate is 75-80% which
makes us not just good but GREAT!
Safety Perception Survey
Some people who have come from other companies have
been involved in behavior based safety in one form or
another. Just to be clear, behavior based safety is more of
a philosophy than a program. The philosophy is pretty
simple and has four fundamental elements:
1. Most incidents and injuries are caused by unsafe
behavior.
2. Behavior is a function of management, teams, tools,
training and habits.
3. We must identify and understand why a safe or unsafe
behavior occurs.
4. Replacing unsafe behaviors with safe behaviors will
result in a safer, healthier, more environmentally
responsible, more confident, more competent, more
productive and happier workforce.
There are many systems that companies around the world
use to implement the behavior based safety philosophy;
DuPont’s system is what we’ve selected because it’s the
best fit for SWN.
Each system also uses a number of tools that tie into
one of the fundamental elements; there are special
software tools, specific observation tools, even unique
reporting tools. One tool of a behavior based safety
program that is pretty common in our industry is the use
of STOP cards. Before SWN selects and implements any
tools we have to first get some training under our belts to
better identify how incidents and injuries are caused by
unsafe behavior. We need to explore the roles that
management, teams, tools, training and habits have in
our behavioral choices.
Eventually we will have some new tools to document
safe and unsafe behaviors but we don’t know exactly
what that will look like yet. Between the Safety
Perception Survey, on-site interviews and an executive
workshop that determination will occur mid-April. We still
have a lot of planning to do.
What is Behavior Based Safety?
What’s next with SWN behavior based safety?
The first phase of identifying gaps is nearly complete and
will end with a mid-April Executive Workshop. After that
workshop we will develop and communicate a long term
plan that we’ll share with you in mid-May.
SIMS Replacement
Documenting incidents and understanding their causes is an
important part of behavior based safety in support of
identifying and understanding why a safe or unsafe behavior
occurs.
Many of you are familiar with SIMS: Southwestern Incident
Management System. This is our incident database and has
been around for several years. It is homegrown and has
been in need of replacement for some time now. We have
evaluated a software package that will be its replacement.
The new system, once installed, will give us tracking and
analysis capabilities we have never had. It’s so important to
not only record incidents but to also be able to really analyze
trends in order to see behavior trends. We look to have this
up and running company-wide by the end of 2014.
At this time we do not plan on using the new SIMS software
to collect observation information; SIMS is about Incident
Management and focuses on incidents that have occurred.
vPSI
vPSI is a tool that many SWN employees got to be pretty
good at and supports the identification and understanding
of why a safe or unsafe behavior occurs; the third element
of behavior based safety. We learned and gained a great
deal from vPSI over the past few years. There was a lot of
great work and leadership involved. We will continue to
use the fundamental techniques of examining incidents,
