Strengthening our safety culture

Goal Zero

---

“We must stay on course. Critical things like safety need constant focus.”

Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive

---

Introduced in 2007, Goal Zero captures the belief that we can operate without fatalities or significant incidents despite the often difficult conditions in which we operate. While we still have work to do, we are making progress. Our injury rate – the number of incidents like slips, trips and falls – has come down by approximately 50% since 1999. To support the drive for Goal Zero, we are developing the safety leadership skills of our staff, rewarding successful performance and getting better at checking that rules are being followed. Our Goal Zero journey is supported by safety initiatives in Shell.

Golden Rules

These three simple rules make it clear how Shell employees and contractors are expected to behave.

You and I:

• Comply with the law, standards and procedures
• Intervene in unsafe or non-compliant situations
• Respect our neighbours

The rules emphasise individual responsibility while encouraging staff to intervene to help their colleagues and respect neighbours.

Safety Days

We are strengthening our safety culture by holding annual company-wide safety days. The “small changes, big differences” theme in 2008 showed how everyone in Shell has a role to play in improving our safety performance. All Shell employees and contractors who work with us were asked to make a personal pledge, committing to do at least one small thing in 2008 to help make Shell a safer place to work. Over 100,000 pledges were received and ranged from giving more safety talks on site and never compromising safety to reduce costs, to always being aware of emergency procedures and doing better route planning before driving.

Hearts and Minds

This award-winning programme emerged from Shell-sponsored research into safety and behaviour at Leiden, Manchester and Aberdeen Universities. It works to change peoples’ attitudes and habits so they behave safely. Hearts and Minds also provides practical techniques for people get comfortable with intervening to stop unsafe behaviour by others. We are sharing the tools from the Heart and Minds programme with the rest of the industry to help promote safe behaviour. The Energy Institute is helping us do this. 

• Visit the Energy Institute website - opens in new window

Learning and competence

A strong safety culture also depends on a competent workforce. We check that everyone responsible for tasks with a significant HSSE risk has the necessary training and skills. Online training is provided through the Shell Open University to develop staff skills in HSSE. Specific training is also provided for high-risk areas, for example,  road safety.