Worley Life
Worley launched its Life approach in January 2020. An approach that acknowledges that people are the solution and create safety every day by relying on their expertise.
By recognising, absorbing and adapting to conditions, their work provides insight into how success is created.
Life, a company value, builds on the success of Worley’s past safety, health and well-being practices and looks to improve and shift beyond a process focus to a more contemporary and people centered approach.
Research highlights focusing on understanding system weakness and performance-shaping factors for positive outcomes, rather than a focus on targets to drive down frequency rate statistics. It also reveals that a traditional target-centred safety approach with a commitment to ‘zero’ increases the number of permanently disabling injuries and fatalities, whereas projects with high incident and injury rates have lower fatality rates.
Worley respects the creative problem solving that people bring and want people involved in decisions about how work is performed. This helps build a high-performing and purpose-driven culture.
Sarah Freeman, the Assurance Programs and Change Director at Worley, gives us some insight into the Life approach and her experience.
Tell us about Worley's ‘Life’ approach to safety and the motivation behind it.
Life is what it is all about. We believe in the safety, health and well-being of our people, communities and the environment. Without it, nothing else matters. It is all about Life and how we all work together to keep each other safe and well.
Life builds on the success of our past health, safety and environment practices and is now also one of our values.
We recognize people are a solution and through individual experiences, our best practices and programs, and our expectations to be curious, speak up, take action and share lessons, we discover the safety excellence we already have. We also choose what is right over what is quick or easy and face important issues looking to understand and learn from them.
Life connects people with our practices and programs that they use day-to-day. Life not only keeps front of mind why we need our Life programs, it also provides the connection between the programs, be it our essential Life-saving rules, or Life conversations by way of example.
What are the dangers of focusing on zero harm to drive down frequency rate statistics?
Humans are fallible and so are our conditions. We want to increase the number of things that go right under varying conditions, to learn from our successful work and from unplanned events. This requires people to be aware and curious, speak up, take action and share learning. A focus on zero, especially if linked with performance outcomes, drives behaviours which are not always aligned with such expectations. It can take away from the focus on understanding system weaknesses and performance shaping factors.
How can organisations learn by harnessing people as a resource?
People have the ability to anticipate and adapt to varying conditions as we have seen in 2020. There is a great deal of research confirming organizations who engage people achieve successful outcomes.
People go above and beyond when empowered which improves team collaboration, innovation, and customer service.
What advice would you give to organisations who are trying to employ a more people-centred safety approach?
As with the introduction of any new approach, developing a strong narrative linked with a compelling reason or catalyst for such a change is beneficial.
In addition, working with early adopters to build successful outcomes and stories also helps to influence others.
Be patient and persistent in taking as many opportunities as you can to reinforce the approach. It takes time for people to build new habits and have the confidence to speak up and put their viewpoint forward and know that this is valued.