In a traditional compliance approach, the focus is often on correcting or controlling workers’ actions to ensure adherence to established rules, regulations or policies.
Workers must be told what to do and what not to do, and safety is the absence of incidents — a traditional and prescriptive approach to safety management. However, with the Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) approach, workers become an integral part of the safety solution. Safety is the presence of capacity, which includes knowledge, skills and resources required to meet the demands of the task and effectively respond to change.
For 118 years, the PCL family of companies has maintained the highest level of values regarding HSE standards. Through mandatory evaluations, developing programs and implementing procedures, PCL has positioned itself as a top-tier contractor for safety. The company enhances safety by empowering and enabling workers to contribute to processes and procedures.
Recently, one of PCL’s three main sectors, the Industrial sector, created a new safety vision that states, "We are building an environment of trust and respect where teams learn together, strengthen capacity and resilience and form the bonds necessary to ensure jobsite events don’t adversely impact lives." This vision is based on HOP training which PCL has been implementing for several years. HOP training enhances safety management by shifting the focus from compliance to enhancing how work is performed.
PCL has initiated five key principles to HOP training:
People make mistakes. Accepting that errors will happen is a good thing. By doing so, tolerance for errors can be built to support "failing safely."
Blame fixes nothing. It may feel as if a situation is being corrected by blaming or even removing a worker, but that doesn’t fix the problem. Blame hinders understanding the circumstances and context. Blame doesn’t help improve operations, systems or the environment.
Context drives behavior. Systems and processes are often set up without a full awareness of how they affect frontline employees. Setting people up for success and addressing individual challenges can make a huge difference in safety, quality and productivity results.
Learning and improving are vital. Frontline employees are the experts on how work is performed successfully. Engagement discussions are a great opportunity to collect information for enhancing operations, systems and environments. When investigating incidents, collect information and learn how to get a full understanding of how procedures, resources and/or surroundings influence individual decisions. Discover new ways to "fail safely."
Leaders’ response matters. Consider the impact of leaders changing the narrative from assigning blame for an error to engaging in a dialogue aimed at learning from the mistake. Blame and fear erode trust. Trust is needed for frontline employees to openly discuss how and what influenced the way they performed a task during an incident investigation.
PCL has also implemented programs like Frontline Work Planning (FLWP), Event Learning and Serious Injury & Fatality (SIF) prevention as part of its strategy. FLWP gives frontline employees ownership of their task planning and includes them in the feedback process to improve planning and execution. With Event Learning, PCL hopes to promote organizational learning to better understand the context behind how and why workplace incidents happen. SIF prevention increases the focus on serious injuries and fatalities in order to elevate safety standards and support the goal of zero high-potential or severe outcome incidents.
PCL is steering HSE practices to support crews in maximizing both safety and human performance so that work is executed safely and effectively.
For more information, visit pcl.com/houston or call (281) 249-8001.
