Process Safety Workforce Survey officially launched to energy industry at Safety Rep Forum

19/04/2024
Craig Wiggins, Executive Director for Step Change in Safety

MEMBER-led safety organisation Step Change in Safety has officially launched its Process Safety Workforce Survey to the energy industry workforce, in partnership with specialist data-driven process safety company, Empirisys. The survey was officially launched at its bi-annual Safety Rep Forum which saw over 100 people attend at the city’s Union Kirk (Thursday 18th April 2024).

The survey examines the eight Principles of Process Safety Leadership and follows on from the organisation’s 2023 Process Safety Leadership Survey, which received responses from more than 450 senior leaders from 73 companies.

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The key takeaways from the 2023 leadership survey were: –

  • The level of engagement and average scores were high, indicating a confident and reflective industry.
  • Among a series of well-performing themes, competency is an industry-wide strong point with some of the highest scores in the survey.
  • Sharing is an area that needs strengthening, particularly externally – there is an unmet call for collaboration across the industry.

As part of Step Change in Safety’s 2024 plan and commitment to improving safety across the sector, and its intention to build on last year’s survey, it is now carrying out the Process Safety Workforce Survey.

Craig Wiggins, Executive Director for Step Change in Safety, commented: “Our 2024 survey has the full support of the UK HSE Energy Division and what better place to launch this than directly to the safety reps who champion process safety across our industry? The Process Safety Workforce Survey has been designed to allow our member companies to now seek the views of the workforce and to provide a comparison to the 2023 Process Safety Leadership Survey. Step Change in Safety will be able to determine the level of Process Safety Workforce knowledge and engagement across the industry. Each member company will receive their own report so that they can review their survey data, but individual member data will remain anonymous within the industry-wide report.”

Craig continued: “Our ask of the energy industry workforce is that they take the time to complete this survey which takes less than 15 minutes. 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.”

Gus Carroll, CEO and co-founder of Empirisys, said: “We share Step Change in Safety’s commitment to protecting and wherever possible enhancing the safety of the energy sector workforce, a commitment which led to our partnership on the 2023 Process Safety Leadership survey. Armed with the metadata and demographic data from this, we are well-positioned to partner with Step Change in Safety once again on the 2024 survey, this time seeking the views of the workforce of member companies.

“There is a genuine craft to designing a survey that yields the reliable data that informs real change. To that end we have developed and refined a set of questions based on process safety theory, industry expertise, and our data science expertise in psychological survey design. We look forward to analysing the responses and presenting the findings to empower Step Change in Safety as they direct their future efforts in Major Accident prevention.”

The survey is focussed on the offshore and onshore, operator and contractor workforce, who report to and include site and onshore management roles across the UKCS, including offshore OIMs and their teams and onshore managers and their teams.

The survey is now open for 9 weeks and will close on 17th of June 2024. Individuals will be able to access the survey through a link that has been sent to all members. Step Change in Safety members can find out more about the Process Safety Workforce Survey and how to get involved by emailing [email protected]

For further information on Step Change in Safety visit https://www.stepchangeinsafety.net/

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