How have your priorities shifted due to the pandemic?
On the human side of HSE, we are capitalising on the visibility of our leadership and they appreciate the power of close interaction with people across the company, of being active, and of simply listening to employees. That is something we have maintained, and we have had strong feedback across the company, in areas of the business where previously this might not have been as strong as in other areas. It is something that is deeply appreciated, having someone ask, with genuine care, “How are you?” And knowing that they mean it.
I think the pandemic was a strong leveler. Traditionally, when we talk about HSE, our frontline workers are the first that come to mind, because they work in potentially hazardous environments. During the pandemic, it was everyone. The pandemic created more compassion and understanding of what everyone was going through. We provided a lot of face-to-face interaction, even sometimes when we had nothing to say. But the fact that we were still in front of people and talking to them and listening was where we gained a lot of trust.
We are now looking at how we can make sure that this learning experience is continual, and not something that was just applied for the duration of the pandemic. We have a lot to learn in general, and we’ve got a lot to learn about our people. We truly did see the power of the people and the power of their resolve. That is something that I think a lot of companies took for granted in the past.
That also means that we need to adapt our HSE [key performance indicators] (KPIs). We have hit quite a few milestones using typical KPIs, like being [lost-time incident]-free. It’s a great milestone, but it is not the driver. The driver is, and should always be, our people. It is not something you can tick off along the way. We need to challenge ourselves to different thinking on what performance looks like, and and how we measure it.
It is not easy, but we need to move from a rule-based approach to a values-based approach. We have the opportunity to do this now, because with the energy transition and other major industry shifts, transformation is already happening. While we’re already going through this change, we need to evolve health and safety and not repeat the same errors.
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