Safety Culture of Exxon Mobil

Requirements to create a safety culture:

Team effort: everyone must be involved in this safety effort

Integrity: must have the courage to report accidents

How Exxon created its safety culture:

Organizational restructuring

Less hierarchies; decentralization of authority: cos in the event of an emergency, its the people on-site who need to respond first

US organization structure have changed more with regards to safety

So we’ll talk about the changes in structure as a whole corporation then link to how Singapore has to change to focus more on safety

Leadership to reflect importance of safety: new vice-presidential role

Ensures that safety issues will not be neglected in major management decisions

Involvement of all shareholders e.g. contractors, employees, managers in project planning, execution to ensure that safety is being considered

HR policies:

Long term recruitment; so that (1) employees have a stake in the company and will be more committed; (2) so they are more willing to invest in that employee in terms of job training (which was insufficient with Valdez) --> COED

Ensuring that employees have sufficient rest; not taking drugs; sufficient manpower in running a function

Having a corporate culture that is suitable for the development of a safety culture

Standard of business conduct/guiding policy in Exxon: Operating with integrity in all we do

This is important because there has to be mutual trust between management and plant, plant and employee, and trust can only be earned if they are committed to always subscribing to and operating in accord with the highest standards of ethical behavior.

OR ExxonMobil’s credo: Efficiency in everything we do

Ensures that managers make a concerted effort to measure, control and reward cost efficiency

Good safety is self-serving in this aspect because there will less loss-time, no need for worker compensation etc

Ensures that there is continuous improvement

OR Fundamentals of the Exxon approach: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/news_pub_poc_overview.pdf

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