Workforce Matters: Recognizing Change’s Role in Safety Incidents
Sept. 3, 2024
4 min read
Leadership commitment and a robust safety culture are key to driving these initiatives and ensuring the safety of all personnel involved.
High-risk facilities, such as chemical plants, oil refineries, integrated energy hubs and nuclear power stations, run in environments where safety and operational efficiency are essential. The ability to recognize and respond to changes in these facilities is crucial for preventing safety incidents and ensuring smooth operations. How do we ensure we identify and adapt to changes in high-risk facilities? What are proactive approaches to monitoring conditions, spotting potential hazards and making timely adjustments to mitigate risks? Let’s dive in.
Countless examples exist of high-risk facilities getting safety wrong. Sometimes, the outcomes are limited to a short loss of production, but unfortunately, in other cases, the consequences are significantly worse for the facility, the workers and their families. Post-incident investigations often find the root cause is an unidentified change or a change where the impact was underestimated. The Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea is one example of this.
While we often focus on disasters, numerous examples exist of incidents that don’t happen because change is recognized and managed well. We can learn a lot from those facilities to replicate how they operate.
Proactive Monitoring of Facility Conditions
Rather than waiting for an issue to arise, today’s technology can predict failures in advance. A combination of continuous monitoring systems, predictive technology and inspections and audits can make a significant difference.
- Continuous Monitoring Systems: Advanced monitoring systems can continuously track key parameters such as temperature, pressure and chemical concentrations.
- Use of Technology: Leveraging technologies like custom sensors, real-time data analytics and machine learning can enhance a facility’s ability to detect anomalies and predict potential issues before they escalate.
- Regular Inspections and Audits: Scheduled inspections and audits by trained personnel can identify changes or deviations from standard operating procedures.
Once these monitoring systems are in place, decisions can be made when abnormalities are found. Could they just be an anomaly, or could they be a real concern?
Identifying Potential Hazards
Investigating these concerns can lead to effective identification of hazards, and there are a few methods that can be employed to help:
- Hazard Identification Methods: Techniques such as Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP), Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and risk assessments can help to identify potential hazards in both processes and equipment/machinery.
- Employee Training and Awareness: Employees can be trained to recognize signs of potential hazards and understand the importance of reporting changes or abnormalities immediately.
- Safety Culture: Fostering a safety culture where employees feel empowered to speak up about potential risks without fear of retaliation is essential.
Making Adjustments as Needed
It’s essential that when a hazard is identified, action is taken to prevent it from leading to an incident. Some ways to ensure this happens include:
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): SOPs should include protocols for responding to identified changes and potential hazards. These procedures need to be reviewed regularly and updated based on new information or incidents.
- Emergency Response Plans: High-risk facilities must have comprehensive emergency response plans that detail steps to be taken in the event of an identified risk or change in conditions.
- Communication and Coordination: Effective communication and coordination amongst different departments and teams within a facility are vital for timely and efficient responses to changes.
The Role of Leadership and Management
Procedures and technology can only help to a certain degree. Behaviors at all levels are essential to creating a culture that values employees’ perspectives and views when raising an issue — whether it is based on their experience, perception or data-driven insights. Leaders need to lead by example through:
- Leadership Commitment: Leaders should demonstrate a commitment to safety by allocating resources for monitoring and safety training and by fostering a sustainable culture of continuous improvement.
- Decision-Making Processes: Decision-making processes should be data-driven, with a focus on safety and risk mitigation. Regular reviews of safety performance and incident reports can guide improvements.
- Feedback Loops: Establishing feedback loops where employees can share opinions, insights and experiences helps in continuously refining safety measures and protocols.
Challenges and Solutions
Implementing the following strategies can help with solving challenges to effective change management. These challenges and solutions include:
- Resource constraints: Prioritize high-impact areas and leverage cost-effective technologies to address the challenge of limited resources for monitoring and safety improvements.
- Resistance to change: Overcome resistance to change through training and awareness programs and demonstrate the benefits of proactive safety measures.
- Data management: Managing the vast amount of data generated by monitoring systems can be challenging. Implementing robust data management systems and analytics tools can help in making sense of the data and identifying actionable insights.
Key Takeaways
Facility managers and safety officers can make a real difference in managing change to prevent safety incidents. By adopting a proactive approach to monitoring facility conditions, identifying potential hazards and making timely adjustments, high-risk facilities can significantly reduce the likelihood of accidents and enhance their operational efficiency. Leadership commitment and a robust safety culture are key to driving these initiatives and ensuring the safety of all personnel involved.
About the Author
Lauren Neal
Founder and Chief Program Creator, Valued at Work
Lauren Neal is the founder of Valued at Work, a consultancy helping STEM and technical organizations build workplaces where people thrive, and results rise.
With over 20 years of experience as an engineer and project manager delivering complex, multimillion-dollar projects globally, Lauren understands firsthand how leadership, team dynamics and culture directly impact performance under pressure.
She now works with senior leaders in male-dominated industries to move beyond tick-box inclusion efforts, embedding practical, people-centered systems that improve retention, strengthen leadership capability and unlock high-performing teams.
Chartered through both the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Association of Project Management (APM), Lauren is a sought-after speaker, writer and consultant known for her straight-talking, commercially grounded approach to workplace culture.
Her book, Valued at Work: Shining a Light on Bias to Engage, Enable, and Retain Women in STEM, became a #1 best-seller and was shortlisted for the 2024 Business Book Awards and the Institute of Leadership’s 2024 Leadership Book of the Year.
Learn more at: valuedatwork.com
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