The initial roll-out of ACWA Power’s Safety Culture Programme at QIPP, an operational Power Plant in the East of Saudi Arabia has been successfully completed.
This is the first and most important step that ACWA Power are taking in shaping a strong, positive safety culture for the future. The organisation is tackling six key attitudes to help everyone understand how easily we can fall into the trap of unnecessary risk taking. These attitudes are described as follows:
- Necessary Rule breaking – “I sometimes need to break the rules to get the job done”
- Sense of control – “With the correct training I would not take risks”
- Complacency -“If I do something regularly it is easier to see the risks”
- Lack of influence – “Human error leads to most accidents”
- Poor hazard perception – “I only take risks when I think it is not dangerous”
- Fatalism – “Sometimes accidents just happen”
Following the roll-out at QIPP this is what the management line achieved and had to say;
Site Senior Leaders
“Usefulness of the Workshop” – 90% (4.5/5) average rating
‘Attitude shift’: 53% average positive attitude shift.
Site Middle Managers
“Usefulness of the Workshop” – 98% (4.9/5) average rating
‘Attitude shift’: 65% average positive attitude shift.
Frontline Leaders
“Usefulness of the Workshop” – 86% (4.3/5) average rating
‘Attitude shift’: 56% average positive attitude shift.
With such a dramatic shift in safety attitudes it really does demonstrate how easily, as intelligent human beings, we can be fooled into thinking quite negatively about such important issues needed to keep ourselves and others safe. With the right approach however it is reassuring to note that it is a simple process to help people adjust their attitudes that may have been decades in the making!