Understanding the role of safety leadership in business continuity

Maia: [00:00:00] Thank you to everyone. Joining us today. I'm Maia Foulis, editor of Canadian Occupational Safety, and I'm pleased to introduce today's webinar Safety Leadership How to Influence Conversations, Culture and Live the Value of Safety within your organization brought to you by Avetta. So safety professionals are an integral part of an operations well-being, and their role is to help an organization's goals so effective safety leadership can enhance business continuity and as a result, increase productivity by avoiding serious incidents and process failures. And to answer your questions on this ever changing landscape, it is my pleasure to introduce our speakers today. So firstly, Alan Higgins, human performance consultant at Ingenium training and consultancy. Mike Groves, Senior Consultant at Ingenium and Dennis Robinson, Manager, Enterprise Sales Development at Avetta. Just a couple of notes before we get started. So at the end of the presentation, we'll be welcoming audience questions. So please feel free to type any questions you have into the Q&A box within the webinar software. If you experience any technical difficulties or have any trouble hearing the audio, please use the chat box next to the Q&A icon. Our speakers will also be asking some questions during the session, so don't forget to answer those and we will be sending out a recording to all attendees soon after the webinar. So with all that said over to you, Dennis. 

Dennis: [00:01:21] Great. Thanks, Maya. As my mentioned, my name is Dennis Robinson and the manager of enterprise sales development here at Avetta. And in Avetta really is the leader in cloud based supply chain risk management. Before I turn the time over to our presenters. I do want to do a quick, brief introduction as to who Avetta is. So what that does is we work with organizations really of all size and industry in the qualification of third party contractors. We have a configurable solution allows clients to build their program based on the requirements of the organization as well as the subsequent partners they're working with in their supply chain. It is a global organization with over 500 clients, as well as over 125,000 active contractors in the Avetta database. If there's any questions or if you'd like further information regarding Avetta, I'd be more than happy to answer those through chat or in the Q&A window throughout today's presentation. Now, without further ado, let me further introduce you to today's speakers. As my mentioned, we have the pleasure of being joined by Alan Higgins and Mike Groves. Alan Higgins is one of the Ingenium's human performance consultants who has performed or has worked with a range of national and global clients to develop human performance and risk programs within the energy and financial services sectors, both globally, and then to provide a less daunting journey for organisations through the subject of human performance. Mike Groves is a graduate of Murray State University in the US with a BSC in OSMH management is over 23 years of experience and has worked across five continents and over 15 different national cultures. Mike worked in the energy services sector across the entire supply chain, leading and implementing health and safety programs for multiple organisations. Now with that, I'm going to turn the table to Alan and Mike to start today's presentation. 

Alan: [00:03:32] Thank you, Dennis. And firstly, I'd like to thank the team at Avetta and Canada for the opportunity to continue Ingenium's Webinar Series. It's a real privilege for us to, to, to collaborate with, with, with the teams. So safety leadership is a vital component for any organization's success. And this webinar, we're looking to help you think about safety, leadership and the safety culture of the journey you are on. To that to that safety, leadership, success. It goes without saying that the benefits of effective safety leadership is that it helps create better business continuity by avoiding incidents, accidents, breakdowns and process failures. Each improves an organisation's standing and reputation among suppliers, clients and partners. And with that, I'm going to hand over to my colleague Mike Groves, who will get us started this afternoon and evening. And once again, thank you all for taking the time to join us. So with that, Mike. 

Mike: [00:04:48] Thanks, Alan. So a lot of folks have probably seen a graphic similar to this, whether it be in your own organization or trade journals and so forth. But this represents how safety and more particularly injuries have transitioned over the years. And if you go back to, say, the seventies and eighties, it wasn't a whole lot of regulations. We had significant failures throughout the industry and large scale fatalities and injuries. Think about Ocean Ranger Piper Alpha, Exxon Valdez. A lot of these occasions were were catastrophic for a number of reasons loss of life, environmental damage, combination of both in some cases. And eventually what had to happen was there was a sort of a hard stance from a government standpoint, and regulations and standards became essentially implemented so that people were held to a common ground and a common set of standards and so forth that they could be legally upheld to comply with. And that was fine. It helped had some progress. As we move through time a little bit, another 5 to 10 years industry started to recognize that it was good business sense to take this on and take ownership of these performance problems and get ahead of it and launch things such as management systems, which would drive a continuous improvement model within the organization. And, you know, as you gain more organizational management commitment, you start to see dramatic increases in relatively short period of time and you start to see the injury rates go down overall. And then it sort of reached a point where there's more to be done. And within management systems, they recognize that it's great to have a lot of processes, but we needed to have something that would engage people. And behavior based safety became very, very common in the nineties, not so much from just peer to peer observations, but also engaging folks and risk assessments and front line planning and assays and the like to try to get everyone involved in the preparation for execution in an effort to drive more improvement and reduce injuries that had some success again. And as we go further in time, culture became kind of the big theme that organizations chased what was what was acceptable. This is how we do work here. Injuries are no longer part of getting work done. They're not factored in. You can't put a cost on safety. That's all culture based transitions that organizations went through. That's still the case now. Every organization has their own culture, but they all have a little different risk tolerance. And that more recently became something that our culture is different than culture for a company. B Because we no longer accept certain things to happen and we don't do it that way anymore. And risk tolerance, something I'll talk about in just a moment on a future slide. But but as you can see, as you get further and further in time, the area below the curve begins to become more and more difficult to show sizable progress. And one of which is because we're not hurting people as frequently as we used to, but people are still getting hurt. And for most organizations, that's not an outcome. That is really something that they can accept. It happens, they don't like it, but we certainly don't say, well, we'll have a certain amount of people get hurt or killed every year and that's okay. No one no one says that our tolerance levels have changed and getting hurt on the job is something that we feel can be managed. And to do that, we've really recognized to close that area under the curve. In today's environment, we really have to do something different and that's approach the individuals with human performance principles and trying to think outside the box in terms of systems that the last minute decisions that individuals make really drive whether or not we're going to be successful or not in a day and keep people from getting hurt, having process failures and having human error involved in ultimately leading to something undesirable happening. So it gives us a little bit of a background in the journey that probably a lot of you have experienced, all of it or some of it, and certainly going through your own journey within your own career and organization. Next. So I'm sure a lot of you all have seen this kind of a model similar, if not this one, something that represents kind of the barriers that exist between hazards and undesired events. So over time, we've done less and less work with individual human beings and put equipment in place to do some of the work that we used to do manually, which, which obviously has has helped reduce exposure for an individual. But with equipment, they're not foolproof. There's still opportunities for hazards to penetrate through the equipment that we're doing and cause harm and undesired event. So it's represented in this Swiss cheese model where each piece of these barriers has strengths, but there's holes and none of them in particular are bullet proof, if you will. So you say that we've done a lot with equipment, but there's a lot of risk that can still penetrate through the equipment that we have that can ultimately lead to an undesired consequence. So we have lots of processes. Think about procedures and work practices, lockout tagout, fines based injury, all the things that exist that we know that just because we have equipment doesn't mean that we're going to be harm free. So we put processes in place to try to prevent those undesired hazards from becoming events. The last thing in the line of defense that we have is our people. We have great equipment, we have great processes. But as you can tell through the model, that doesn't mean that we have no risk. So people represent the last line of defense between a particular hazard or a risk and something undesired actually happening. So you kind of go back to that previous slide we had before the the human performance element is something that everyone knows that they need to work on. Whether they've got the right tools and their toolset to improve that or not is really kind of what we're talking about in today's environment, where how do we strengthen the barriers of our people? How do we remove the holes in the Swiss cheese so that the hazards that exist are interrupted by people being on top of their game and can disrupt that hazard before it becomes something undesired and we have an event. So that's kind of the theme of what we're talking about in today's human performance world is we've got to strengthen the barrier of our people so that we can utilize our last line of defense to the optimum amount. Cut out. So this this little decision tree or risk model, if you will, is something I'll kind of walk through it. And I'm going to give you a recent example of something that I experienced just this past week that kind of puts it in context. So I've been in countless incident investigations where people will say, you know, I just didn't recognize the hazard, you know, new to the industry, distracted, whatever the case might be. They didn't even recognize that there was a risk. And that kind of represents that first, first line of decision there that I even see it. And if the answer to that is no, well, you have no ability to kind of interrupt that. The next one might be where somebody's been in the trade for a long time. Been around a certain risk and not necessarily ever had it go into it undesired consequence. So think about working the heights people have for a long period of time. You know, they saw the industry kind of change and had to tie off, but they've never really had an issue with working in heights, so they don't necessarily understand it because they've never seen the consequences of something like that happening. So if they don't understand it, there's a good chance that they're not going to prepare themselves to mitigate that risk. And you ultimately have an at risk behavior that occurs and an incident that can occur. And then the last piece is, is if I understand it well, I still accept it. And this is one of those where your risk tolerance is different for every individual. So it kind of goes back to that culture discussion around an organization, what is and what is not an acceptable risk. And that's the tolerance. This isn't something that's concrete. It ultimately kind of gets to a belief system within an organization as to whether or not they will accept certain risk. Are we going to get to a point where we have zero risk in the work that we do and the operations that we have? Probably not. There's the reason we have all those safeguards in place. But what risk are acceptable and what you're not is one of the things that an organization can tighten up once they've had experience and thought through these things. The reason we do hazard assessments and risk assessments and so forth to understand those risks and can we accept it as it is or be further mitigated. So the example I was going to give you just happened. Yes. Last week visiting one of our customers in Montana, which is not too far from Canada. It was up around Glacier National Park, but at that worksite there was a load that had to be shipped out with a trucking company. And one of the things that we noticed was that the trucking company comes with their load restraints and kind of wanted the contractor there to help out. So we start putting chains on and they, you know, there's two types of binders for change and you've got your binders and you've got the old school lever binders. So in the instance that I ran into, I used to work at an organization that that had a really, really serious, debilitating injury where a lever binder struck somebody in a jaw and made major damage, had to have facial reconstruction to change the person's life forever. So I'm very particular about whether I'll accept that kind of a risk or not. So we had we had sort of three scenarios here. The first one was was a young guy that was working on that, and he saw the truck driver using a lever binder and he just jumped right in and started using a lever binder because that's what he saw. Somebody else. He did not see the risk. Right. So that's that first column from a risk perspective and a tolerance. He didn't even say I didn't think there was a risk with that. He saw somebody do it. It worked. So he jumped in there and I had to stop him. Then we have one of the older guys that was on the on the site and doing the same thing. He was on a ratchet or excuse me, on a lever binder. And he understood the risk because he had used it for many times. But he, in his own mind, took precautions to make sure that if there is a reaction with the binder, that it doesn't strike the individual. Because he'd never seen anybody get hit with one, but he knew there was a risk with it. So he he accepted that risk. And then myself, on the other hand, kind of falls into the third column where I see it and I understand it and I can't accept it because if it goes wrong, something devastating happens to that person. It was part of my role to make sure that these individuals went home safe. So I had to intervene and stop that activity because it was no longer an acceptable risk for us to continue to restrain a load with a lever binder. So hopefully that kind of makes sense. And what we're talking about when it gets into risk tolerance so that you'll see different ways the organization can react and you have to rely on the entire team to do the right thing. But ultimately, watching for the vulnerable situations, particularly in the first column where people just simply don't see the risk, and then you have others that see it and still accept it. And you need that courageous person within an organization that will still jump out there and stop an activity. Even though it may be successful, the risk is too high and we can't let it proceed like that. Okay, Alan. 

Alan: [00:16:58] Yep. Thanks, Mike. So I guess invalidating what Mike was talking about in terms of risk tolerance Ingenium over the last couple of years, it's completed a series of studies which the International Energy Services Organization researching the subject of risk tolerance in the workplace. And what you see on screen is the initial research, which was which was developed across 17 of the largest energy development projects globally in 2014, where our team studied and researched international workforce risk tolerance and measuring that tolerance then relative to lagging indicator data in safety performance. So the initial the initial study, which was developed with one of the world's largest energy services organizations, where the performance of seven different national workforces was compared across a number of international projects. And as you can see on screen, the results show a distinct correlation between the project safety performance as represented by TR or RR in terms of total recordable incident ratio and the calculated risk tolerances for the selected nationalities. Based on Dutch philosopher Geert Hofstede data and the results clearly demonstrate that countries that possess a higher risk tolerance went on to deliver significantly poorer safety performance on those projects and to back it up during 2018, the same exercise was conducted on a selection of nine different energy projects, again worldwide, with another major energy organization where the safety performance of six different nationalities referenced in the chart on screen. And again, as you can see in the second study, there is that direct correlation between this time to recordable frequency or sorry record with case frequency and risk tolerance was calculated for those representative workforces. So both studies provide certainty that there is the higher the risk tolerance of the workforce there is that potential for poor performance in safety was evident now in saying that the results of these two studies have been presented and shared at several oil and gas conferences worldwide. And in each instance, we're providing participants with a new frame of reference for thinking about cross cultural safety programs. And I suppose for the group here today, it's something to be very cognizant of when participating on projects on an international basis, when there is different workforces and different nationalities on the project, to just be cognizant of the risk tolerance that potentially that nationality can, can, can, can bring to a can bring to a workforce. So with that, we're going to kick off the first poll of the day. And what I'd like to do is look at this first question here, which is my company places a great importance on safety. So with that statement, do you strongly agree, agree, are undecided, disagree or strongly disagree with that with that statement? So with the poll being open, I'd welcome your I'd welcome your feedback on that question. So we give it another moment or two there. Okay. So let's go to close the poll there. So if we look at the results on that poll, we see a very, almost 90% of the participants here on the on the webinar agree or strongly agree with that statement, bearing in mind that there is also 12% potentially who are in the undecided or disagree statement of of of the poll. But what we're trying to what we're trying to look at here is establishing a positive value on safety requires clear and dedicated safety leadership. And this is hugely important in creating that culture, thus fosters, I suppose, positive health and safety performance within an organization. And from Ingenium perspective, we believe there is five principles that should be considered for successful safety culture to be to be developed, the first one being receiving management's commitment. And this is absolutely key. Otherwise, a safety program, a safety culture program, it just won't work. It's important for senior management to lead by example and demonstrate a visible commitment to safety. The next one is establishing safety as a top priority, and that means having it at the top of every conversation across all aspects of the business. All business decisions have a number of competing factors, be it quality, cost, opportunity, time and so on. But it's important that leaders prioritize safety in their business objectives. The next one we look at is increasing visibility, and that's increasing visibility as a safety leader, and that's key to become a trusted safety leader within the organization. And that means developing a habit of personally conducting safety walkabouts, demonstrating commitment and increasing awareness to the actual safety conditions within an organization. Safety walkabouts are a great way to provide an opportunity for leaders to get to know their teams better and hold better conversations about safety. The next one we look at then is creating that learning culture, and that's about learning from incidents from near misses, but most importantly, learning from others and learning from each other. Employees at all levels of the organization should be encouraged to contribute ideas for improvement. Establishing that learning culture allows the organization to recognize, learn and learn and change unsafe behaviors and unsafe conditions within the organization. And then finally, it's about establishing an effective safety management system as the foundation for all systems and processes. And that's central to everything, you know, these systems and the safety management system that has to be championed by the senior executives in an organization. And by championing that, you know, it shows that they're supporting their senior management and safety professionals within the organization and then to the left to help develop and sustain safety leadership. The Ingenium leading zero safety model helps recognize all aspects of leadership and provides a tool for organizations to measure and develop the required safety leadership traits for those business leaders within an organization. The model itself is developed around Ingenium's old P4EQ360 Leadership Survey, which incorporates the four piece of process people, paradigms and programs. And we've also linked in the elements of leadership intelligence into that, and that's built out from academic research in that area. But when we expand the model out further, there are a multitude of traits that can be assessed and measured across each of the five dimensions. And developing each trait builds a greater leadership competency and additionally for safety leaders, the way in which information is processed and how decisions are made when it comes to safety. The leading zero program profiles a distinct safety leadership personality. It's it's almost like a DNA marker that others around you notice. Equally evident to followers is the leader's unique decision making style, and that's founded on a leader's upbringing, training, job, role and cultural environment that they've operated in. And as outlined in previous webinars here with leaders possess and process thousands of thoughts on a daily basis, some of which potentially involve some level of risk or from a positive or potentially negative point of view in terms of impact that can have both on a personal safety within the organisation and business outcomes. So I suppose the ultimate goal of all of these principles is to implement a positive change within the organisation. And when we talk about positive change, you know, safety is a concept that we use every day, both at work and in and at home. You know, we read safety reports when we're buying a new car, we tell our kids to wear bicycle helmets, we put our seatbelts on in the car. We're surrounded by safety labels on pretty much everything from plastic bags to hairdryers, both. How often do we actually have safety conversations in our workplace, thinking about our workplaces somewhere where we spend one third of our adult lives? And the answer to that question is actually, we don't. Not enough conversations happen in the workplace around safety. Data shows that on average, 3 million people in private industry face some sort of an injury as a result of their job. And in many in many industries, injury costs and the knock on consequences can far exceeds the business profits or business goals in any given year. So when you look at culture, being at the centre, incorporating the values, assumptions, norms and everyday behaviours of people working in the organisation, at its core, achieving a desired safety culture has to then encompass the three elements that are going on around it. The first one being compliance, which is concerned with the quality of the oversight of policies and procedures across the organisation's safety management systems to ensure that they meet the mandated regulatory requirements that might spoke about earlier risk management and which is about continuously developing processes to better identify risk and to control the exposure to that risk. And finally, then governance. And that's about establishing and maintaining the controls by which an organisation can validate and ensure compliance to the regulatory standards and policies. So it's supposed to create lasting change. An organisation has to create an environment in which safety is more than just a tick box exercise. It has to be an attitude that makes up the very foundations and is upheld by everybody from the frontline worker right up to the senior executive teams within, within, within an organisation. When we look at making a culture of safety, the foundation of achieving the safety vision of an organisation, again we see six key areas that have to be that need to be considered. And the first one is about commitment to a culture of safety. And establishing the culture begins, as I've already mentioned, with senior management, if senior management is committed to improving safety, fostering the success of a safety program, empowering everybody within the organisation to be part of that solution, then that's the foundations for a safety culture to actually actually grow successful safety cultures. They're about there, they're about pattern. They're driven by passion for analysing safety risks. And when we look at today's today's safety environment, there's many assessment tools available to ensure that decision based safety information reaches the senior management so that it can be assessed and analysed and these tools can be quite valuable. However, they may not actually address the potential underlying issues that may exist within a company's internal processes. So that's just something to be, to be, to be mindful of. Investing in a culture of safety can be achieved in several ways, both in time and in capital. Ensuring safe projects and facilities needs to be supported with systems to be able to track and monitor the safety concerns. And look, technology has helped lead that lead that journey from observation and intervention to job safety analysis and intervention and sorry, accidents and intervention programs. But investments can actually also be manual. Without without without a significant cost investment. As such simple mechanisms as just allowing employees to voice their concerns and suggestions and making that process quite simple for them to feed into the system. Making training a priority is one of the most important ways to invest in team members. And I know organizations are constantly looking at how do we how do we invest in our teams and how do we how do we bring how do we get buy in from our teams to to to stick with us? So ensuring that they're best prepared for the challenges that they face, employers providing that training need to need to ensure that it is done in a manner that is that is going to prove a win win situation for both the employee and the organization itself and then implementing a culture of safety. And that's a commitment to change and deliver and sustain in sustainability, where accountability for safety resides at the top of the organization. So I think once implemented then those for those those previous five steps, it's about maintaining that culture of safety, because if you let it slip, you have to go right back to the start and do it all over again. So this does require constant reinforcement of safety messaging, stressing the importance of it being a team effort. When we look at developing that foundation. Throughout history. When we look at safety culture in an organization and we look at how it underpins compliance, risk management and governance, but what actually underpins safety culture? We know it involves a fundamental shift in thinking and behavior, starting with senior leadership, but it often involves developing new practices and that starts with new mindsets and also a new way for an organisation to start thinking. The quote you see here on screen is from the IAEA in 1987 following the investigation into the Chernobyl disaster. And that actually is the first time that the principle of organisational attitudes appeared in safety, even though Edgar Chahine had introduced the concept of organisational culture back in the early 1980s. So it's really interesting to see how long it actually took for, for culture to enter into the into the safety into the safety world. When we look at the traits of a great safety leader, they're often defined as someone who influences, guides or inspires others in the pursuit of zero incidents. And research suggests that there's four primary traits in which leaders succeed and sustain that change. And firstly, it's about having the emotional stability and composure. So being calm and confident and predictable around others, specifically in times of stress. Because if you're not calm, then those people around you are not going to be are not going to be calm either. And if you create chaos, then chaos will ensue all around you. The second one is having the credibility to admit mistakes. So rather than putting time, effort and energy into covering them up if something is wrong or not working, great leaders identify these and look at ways to correct them. Good interpersonal skills. These are key. Providing safety leaders with the ability to communicate and persuade others without resorting to negative or coercive tactics is is vitally important. So good communication, good interpersonal skills is key. And then finally, it's about having a broad intellectual breadth, providing safety leaders with the ability to understand a wide range of areas and being able to balance, I suppose, multiple agendas, initiatives and challenges that that they can be faced. So to be an effective respect to safety leader and navigating through these four primary traits, we need to look at them as, as, as as a whole collective as we, as we commence or as we go through our, our own personal safety culture journey. So following on from that, the next poll question that's going to lead in very nicely to the next to the next area that we're going to that we're going to look at. So when we look at the question here on screen, leaders encourage me to intervene if I see unsafe behaviors. So, again, it's a simple poll with strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree or strongly disagree. So again, we really appreciate your your your your impulse on the on on where you are coming from and how leaders encourage or potentially encourage within your organization. And again, we give the ball a couple of moments to come through. So I'll give it another couple of seconds and then I'll then I'll close the poll and we can we can look at it there. So what we're seeing there is potentially 91% of people either agree or strongly agree with with the statement. Again, a couple of undecideds and and and a couple that disagree. But what we're looking at is actual research that that that we have we hear is Ingenium have completed and communication, as we've said several times, is key to a safe working environment. It is needed to provide clear messaging around the importance of safety as a value and it ensures roles and responsibilities are understood. I suppose following from following on from the leading zero safety cultural model. Earlier again we completed a series of surveys developed by Ingenium that we conducted with several organisations around safety leadership. And the first information that we got out of it was that it indicated that 90% of respondents believe employees should provide feedback to others when they're operating at risk. However, unfortunately, the same survey identified that only 60% of people actually say that they do provide that critical feedback and feedback from respondents pointed to confidence in one's own communication style or in the actual safety culture of the organization in having those types of conversations. It really is a lost opportunity for employees who feel reluctant to warn their co-workers that they're potentially working risky or are doing potentially unsafe behaviors, especially considering most injuries do have a behavioral element to it so that the human factors element might make reference to at the at the beginning. Ironically, however, people underestimated others willingness to receive feedback. In fact, 74% of respondents from the survey come to that. They would actually welcome peer observations for the purpose of receiving safety related feedback, and especially when this is in contravention when you think of keeping them and others safe. Yet when asked, only 28% believed their fellow employees actually felt this way when they would indeed welcome intervention. So employees need to be more open to safety. Relationship feedback. If coworkers do a better job of providing and receiving that that that feedback from from their from their from their coworkers. You know, I think it's fairly certain that all of you have seen something like this before and to provide effective feedback to others when when they're working at risk. You know, it's important that you look at some of the key pointers in receiving, in giving, providing that feedback. And first of all, it's don't make it personal. You know, let's focus on the actual behavior that was observed and how it actually might lead to an incident. Over here in Ireland, we call it playing the ball, not the person. Ask questions to facilitate the conversation and not to lecture. So asking what? What risks do you see here? Or What do you think about? Is there a different method or a different way that we can we can start doing these things. Give feedback immediately and personally make it 1 to 1. So observation and intervention programs are designed in two parts, and it's usually the intervention piece, which is generally the harder for people because it can potentially lead to some sort of conflict if not handled correctly. So it is a required skill. It's certainly one that does require practice, but it's also important to ensure that this is done 1 to 1 so that there's not any public defensive reactions in that conversation. The next one that is showing genuine care for the person's feelings of well-being and that it is actually a genuine conversation, that it's that that's being happened. And, you know, you'll need to link it to something like a Nobody Gets Hurt type of program. So it has to be genuine other otherwise if it's not, people will quickly see through that fake empathy that you're showing them. So offer them the opportunity to work together to find a better solution. Asking questions like, Can I make a suggestion? And finally thank the person for listening. So show some appreciation that the other person has taken the time to actually hear what it is your what it is you're saying. And then on the flip side of it, in terms of receiving that feedback and if you're receiving the feedback from someone else, you know, it's just as important to facilitate and have that collaborative relationship and have your emotions on a fairly even keel when you are being approached. So if you do find yourself in a situation where someone approaches you, it is important to actively listen to the feedback without interrupting that person, even though you may want to do so. It's also about setting your mind into a positive thinking mode and that might be beneficial, which will allow you to remain open and receptive to the conversation without getting defensive. Because after all the initial observation, it would be beneficial to discuss how things can be done better and safer following onwards. And finally, you know, like when you're giving feedback, it's important to to practice and important to give thanks to the person who is taking the time out to actually recognize and actually say to you, Hey, look, buddy, potentially you might be doing something, you might be doing something risk risky here. So certainly taking that time to acknowledge someone coming to you as well as you as well as the previous slide, you you acknowledging that that that person takes it takes the time from from from that end as well. So with that, I'm going to open the third pole that we're going to that we are going to to to have here today. And that is the poll of I am personally conscientious about safety and ensure others people's safety and mine. So again, same idea. We really appreciate your feedback on this as it will help the the conversations and also help our own research as we look at safety culture from from from your global perspective. So again, I'll leave it open for a couple of minutes, and we will we will see where we get to from there. Okay. I'll give it another 10 seconds and then we'll we'll take it from there. So delighted to see that 100% of of of the participants are conscientious about safety and to ensure that other people's safety is is is taken into consideration as well as as well as their own. And that's and that's vitally important. When when when you look at it from the perspective of, you know, as we come towards the end of of of this webinar, you know, I'd like you to think about your role and what it means for this particular topic. On safety as a safety leader or safety professional, you don't just conduct procedures. You're responsible for devising, modifying and implementing those those procedures, you know, with your knowledge and experience your best place to influence those behaviours. You know, the the health and safety at work laws and acts which differ from country to country underpin everything. And employers need to ensure their employees health and safety by providing a safe working environment with appropriate systems, training, supervision and equipment necessary to be able to carry out their duties. So that's an extremely important one. And when it comes to legal duties as safety leaders and professionals, you folks possess considerable knowledge around the hazards and risks associated with the work that your company does. You know, some critical life altering risks like electrical isolation, lockout tagout, working at heights and human machine interface. They're just a few examples of hazards that might be encountered on a daily basis in your work environment. So just being aware of the hazards, the risks and what controls are are in place. You know, as an organization you may have many health and safety procedures and policies in place, but if people are engaging in unsafe behaviours, these can become pretty redundant pretty quickly. So think about how you'd motivate people to practice safe behaviors when when they see others around them potentially not acting safe or potentially deviating from from, from, from standards or practices. So it's it has been shown over many projects that collaboration and collaborating in work safely. It does reduce incidents and workers go home safe to their families. It's good for business. So I suppose getting it right first time brings a sense of achievement for everyone involved. So it's definitely worth investing in from the start of a project, especially as as you being the safety leader or safety safety professional. So from my side, I would like to personally thank you all for your time today. And I leave the final closing thoughts to to Mike. So, Mike, with that, I'll let you wrap up. Mike, I think you're on mute. 

Alan: [00:50:21] I think I've lost Mike here? I think so. Look what we're waiting for, for for Mike to jump back in. I think just looking at the closing reflection here on screen, you know, while an exact definition of safety culture may not exist, you know, it is primarily considered as an unyielding commitment to safety and one that holds the highest value in the organization. And I suppose to survive it must exist in a blame free environment where errors are reported without punishment and at the same time, people in the organization continuously, continuously learn. So once again, I think what we're just waiting on Mike to get back in to us. I would like to thank you all for your time, and we will open it to some Q&A for a couple of moments that are that are that are left. I think I see Mike joining us back. 

Maia: [00:51:37] So I think Mike might be having some technical issues. So maybe let's just launch into the questions and wait for him to arrive back. So thank you to to Mike and Alan for a great presentation and thank you to all those who already sent some questions. In just a quick note, if you would like to gain further insights, you can also download a Avetta's free whitepaper using procurement power for good, a global approach to ethical sourcing. The link is available in the chat and so yeah, please roll on the questions. Use the Q&A tab to the right hand of the screen. If you have any tech issues, don't hesitate to let us know. But we do have. Oh, and also to answer some of the questions that have already been asked. Yes, we will indeed be sending out a recording to all attendees soon after the webinar. So without further ado, looking for a first question, I had one under my eye. Here we go. So we have the question. So what is to be done if risk has been identified, perceived, but there is no way that we can reject it. Alan, perhaps you'd like to start. 

Alan: [00:52:44] Yeah. So I think that comes back to the earlier, the earlier slides that, that, that Mike hides in terms of understanding the risk and understanding is it is is it something we are going to accept? I think I'm just pulling up the slide there. Second slide. Yeah. So I think in terms of looking at the risk, if the risk has been identified, you know, that that's the first step in is is identifying that risk and also then looking at what what are we as an organization doing today to put the correct guards in place? Like we're like all risk obviously can't be rejected or what you're trying to do there is is minimize the impact that that risk can have on the on the operation or on the or on the the process or procedure at hand. And, Nic, I'd appreciate maybe some further insights into into the risks that you're that you're trying to mitigate against to give a to give a more direct answer. But certainly, I think identifying the risk and knowing what are the inputs, what's causing that risk is vitally important. And then I think it's about putting putting together a good, robust mitigation plan, communicating that mitigation plan to everybody in that area where the risk has been identified to to to ensure that that it is that it has been managed. And certainly it is one that requires top of the top of the morning toolbox talk or top of any safety briefings that need to that that that need to go out. So certainly communicate, communicate, communicate will be my will be my direction on that one. 

Maia: [00:54:53] Wonderful. So we have another question from Gonzalo. So he says, I worked for a company that had a very punitive approach to safety incidents where even an unintentional mistake could lead to discipline. Do you see a place for disciplinary action? I guess within this context. 

Alan: [00:55:12] Yeah. Look as well, there's two trains at all. There's the train of thought of am I intentionally coming to work to cause harm to myself, my team or my organization? Or am I coming to work to do the best that I can do? If the answer to that, if the first if the answer is A, I'm coming to to to cause disruption and coming to cause harm and potentially injure others, then I would say, yes, there needs to be a disciplinary process in place. However, I would see that personally. I would see that as as the as the very less percentage of people. Certainly, I think 99% of people come to work to do the best they can do, engage with their team, make sure everyone goes home and goes home on a daily basis with as they arrived as they arrived into into the workplace. And that I think then it's back on the organization itself to look at what's the culture that we want to put in place, what is the what is the what is the the the DNA of the organization that we want to have? What are those core values that we want to live? And I think certainly. Unintentional mistakes. They're unintentional. I did not intentionally mean to go out and do something. So certainly I think the senior management teams there probably need to sit down and look at the processes and procedures that are happening within within the organization. They probably need to maybe take a step back and look at what are the values that they want to that they want to project within within the organization itself. But certainly I would be slow in terms of direct disciplinary action for unintentional errors or unintentional mistakes. 

Maia: [00:57:21] Okay, wonderful. So just we have about one or 2 minutes left for more questions. I can't see anything so far in the Q&A tab, but if you do have a question, please feel free to to put it in. I think we are still waiting for Mike. Maybe he had some kind of technical issue. So the spotlight is all on you, Alan. 

Alan: [00:57:41] He does manage to message me that he keeps getting kicked out and says the video stream has been disconnected. So I'm delighted to see that he's leaving me here all by myself. 

Maia: [00:57:54] That's okay. I think you're doing just fine. We've got a lot of positive feedback in the chat as well, so I don't think there are any further questions. So I think that will wrap up the Q&A and I'll hand things over to to Dennis to wrap everything up. 

Dennis: [00:58:08] Great. Thanks, Maia. Apologize for the the video issues on Mike's end. But with that said, it was a wonderful presentation to Alan and Mike, even though you probably can't hear us. I appreciate everything you did as well as my you mentioned we did have a lot of Q&A questions. Appreciate the interactions and great comments as well. If there were any other unanswered questions that do come through after the fact, we will for those over to Alan and Mike and then they can follow up with you as well. Let me thank everyone who attended today. Thanks, Maia. Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Mike. And then, of course, all the attendees as well. I also want to again just thank everybody and thanks, Mike, for the wonderful presentation with that on behalf of Avetta, again, I'm Dennis Robinson. Thank you all for joining us today and have a safe, wonderful afternoon. Thanks. 

Alan: [00:59:01] Thank you, Dennis. And thank you to to to to the participants. 

Dennis: [00:59:08] Likewise.