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6
NEWS
April/May 2013 www.esb.ie/em
4 you
ESB
Safety for life
“Participation on the Safety leadership Programme has helped give me a greater understanding of how I should behave to be a more effective Safety leader .through a combination of ‘real life’ examples and practical role plays we explored differences in leadership styles. We also looked at the importance of recognising the appropriate leadership styles for particular situations and adapting those styles to gain optimum results.” Donal Lehane, Nominated Safety Engineer, Lee Stations
ESB – LEADING THE WAY IN SAFETY PSYCHOLOGY
SAFETY PSYCHOLOGY is concerned with identifying behaviours that cause incidents (e.g. fear of reprisal for reporting unsafe situations) and also behaviours that prevent incidents (e.g. good housekeeping) and promotes positive health, well-being and safety. Safety psychology, with a specific focus on identifying safe behaviours and improving safety culture, has become increasingly important as an area that requires attention within high risk industries.
ESB is leading the way in Ireland in terms of bringing an innovative approach towards understanding safety from the psychological viewpoint. The design of the leading edge 4you tool-kit has been based on 20 years of best practice research in the energy, pharmaceutical, aviation, oil and gas industry and medical industries. Its design has also been based upon research conducted with our own staff in ESB and is fully customised to our own needs in Generation and Wholesale markets and the Networks businesses.
ACHIEVING WORLD CLASS HEALTH AND SAFETY PERFORMANCE
UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOLOGY of people To achieve world class health and safety performance and to capture the hearts and minds in ESB for our health and safety, it is important to understand the psychology of people and why we do what we do. People are often identified as one of the causes of an incident. At present, human error contributes to approximately 80% of incidents that happen in ESB. When talking about human error, it is important to realise that people rarely make mistakes on purpose – often we can be ‘set up to fail’ by how we are hard-wired in terms of our memory and attention systems. Human error also does not relate solely to the behaviours of front-line personnel but also to management and organisational factors. For example, inadequacies in competence assurance systems, poorly designed equipment or a lack of resources have the potential to influence the behaviours of everyone in the organisation.
WHY 4YOU?
As we have designed out risk, the human component of incidents has become increasingly prevalent. To account for safety from a person centred viewpoint, the 4you programme has been designed in house by an ESB team of safety psychologists and subject matter experts in the Networks and Generation and Wholesale market businesses.
World class health and safety performance in ESB involves more than mechanically applying safety management systems and complying with safety legislation – it requires everybody being involved and engaged – from top to bottom – in health and safety. To ensure our mental wellbeing and our physical safety, it is vital that we move beyond compliance and promote a culture of participation, where health and safety is part and parcel of what we do and how we behave on a daily basis.
4you seeks to capture our hearts and minds for safety and to get everyone to work safely not because we ‘have to’ but because that is the way we want to. 4you is about improving the culture of health and safety in ESB and making safety a fully integrated part of our everyday work behaviours.
WHAT IS 4YOU?
4you is a leading edge tool-kit developed by ESB for ESB staff and focuses on encouraging safe behaviour and intends to improve the safety culture by:
1. Helping safety leaders to lead the way in driving our health and safety culture in ESB and achieving world class safety performance.
2. Providing the processes and tools to get everyone in ESB involved and to facilitate behaviour change so that we are healthy and safe.
