Getting serious about safety: Accountability and leadership – the forgotten elements

Abstract

Abstract The paper sets out a model specifying the four elements required to deliver breakthrough safety performance, focusing on accountability for safety and strong leadership, although this needs to be applied in conjunction with workforce involvement and management commitment. Drawing on the experience of Shell U.K. Exploration and Production, this paper highlights the role accountability and leadership have played in improving the company's safety performance. The motivation to change behaviour was achieved by making explicit the link between actions and their consequence, in terms of linking safety to reward and career progression. This paper illustrates the controlled manner in which this was done based on Kotter's (1996) model of organisational change[1]. The provision of skills for people to make a behavioural change was done through training all staff on Shell Expro locations in how to intervene if someone is acting in an unsafe way and how to respond to an intervention. The other key skill identified as essential to delivering this message in a constructive non-threatening way is leadership style. The paper demonstrates – in Bass's classification scheme – that a transformational leadership style is the most effective way for senior managers to communicate their commitment in a believable form[2].