High-level findings from Process Safety Workforce Survey shared at Offshore Safety Awards
Member-led safety organisation Step Change in Safety shared preliminary findings from its Process Safety Workforce Survey with the energy industry workforce on 2nd July during the Offshore Safety Awards in the city’s Beach Ballroom.
Craig Wiggins, CEO of Step Change in Safety
The survey was originally launched at Step Change in Safety’s bi-annual Safety Rep Forum on 18th April, in partnership with specialist data-driven process safety company, Empirisys.
The survey examined the eight Principles of Process Safety Leadership and followed on from the organisation’s 2023 Process Safety Leadership Survey, which received responses from more than 450 senior leaders from 73 companies.
1,949 respondents from 90 organisations participated in the Process Safety Workforce Survey, the biggest process safety survey carried out to date. The majority of respondents have worked in the industry for 10 – 20 years with high-hazard workers in Operations well represented.
The three highest-scoring themes were Clarity, Culture and Engagement, with Competency and Auditing also performing well. The findings have highlighted key areas of focus including Sharing, Proactivity and Informing.
Following the high-level sharing, a process safety panel was chaired by awards host Andrea Brymer for further discussion with the audience. The panel included:
Peter Sueref, CTO and Co-founder of Empirisys
Samantha Pease, Director of Energy Division, HSE
Bruce Webb, Associate Director, Scapa Energy
Steve Rae, Director, Fortitude – Action Beyond Compliance
Gatsbyd Forsyth de Barrera, North Sea HSES SVP, Harbour Energy
Colin Boud, OIM, Anasuria Operating Company
Ian Phillips, Production Technician/ESR, Beryl Alpha, Apache
Craig Wiggins, CEO of Step Change in Safety says, “The Process Safety Workforce Survey was designed to allow our member companies to seek the views of the workforce and provide a comparison to the 2023 Process Safety Leadership Survey. The key takeaways from the 2024 workforce survey are that there were many positives around culture – which was a consistent strong point in the theme questions and the comments, and also a high point for leadership. Clarity and Competence also performed well, particularly related to training and incident reporting which is encouraging.”
Craig continues, “The results also show that there is more work to be done around Sharing across the industry, which was once again a low score and a persistent theme in the comments. Although Engagement scored more positively than amongst leaders, there is still work to do around involving front-line employees. Each member company will soonreceive their own report so that they can review their survey data, but individual member data will remain anonymous within the industry-wide report.”
Craig concludes, “The results of these individual surveys will give organisations a better indication of how their workforce understands and values process safety, a strong leading indicator of Major Accident prevention. Additionally, the combined industry data will allow Step Change in Safety to direct its future work.”
The next steps following the release of the preliminary survey findings will be a white paper released in August with full results and breakdowns, alongside organisation-specific results and benchmarking provided to the individual organisations who participated.
