The Big Picture: Driving Sustainable Change with Health & Safety Transformation

With the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), many countries have begun to invest in health and safety transformation programs. In Saudi Arabia, Vision 2030 highlights the importance of health and safety as key factors in achieving sustainable development. The common factor between the UN SDGs and Saudi Vision 2030 is thus their emphasis on adopting a holistic approach to health and safety, addressing H&S issues at individual and organisational levels.

In this episode of the Anticipate podcast, Georges Faraj, Senior Health & Safety Management Consultant, is joined by Tahir Qadir, Health & Safety Service Lead, to explore the latest trends in H&S transformation and the main drivers behind H&S transformation programmes with a special focus on Saudi Arabia.

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Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

saudi vision 2030, sustainable development, health and safety, safety, transformation, organizational culture, ksa, healthy and safety transformation

SPEAKERS

Tahir, Georges

Georges  00:00

I am George first senior health and safety management consultant. And in this episode of The anticipate podcast, I am pleased to be joined by Taha clowder Health and Safety Service leader. Welcome to the anticipate podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

Tahir  00:13

Thank you Judge lawyer to be part of this podcast.

Georges  00:16

So just to set the context, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the UN SDGs, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia vision 2030 share a common vision of transformation towards a sustainable future, recognizing the crucial role of health and safety and achieving sustainable development, the transformational agenda of both the SDGs and KSA efficient 2030 demand the holistic approach to health and safety that addresses concerns at the individual and organizational level. And this episode, I'd like to talk to you about how health and safety transformation programs have been impacting countries with zoom in on the KSA vision 2030. And its endeavors to tackle the issues of poverty, inequality, climate change, prosperity, peace, justice, education, health, social protection, and employment and realizing the intersecting nature of these issues, and the inclusion of them all included, and its national strategy. So to start it off to her, I think to set the scene we've already touched on the KSA vision 2030. So the first question I would like to ask is, can you please elaborate on how health and safety and why is it a crucial component, and achieving the KSA vision 2030

Tahir  01:32

Basically, the world is moving towards, like sustainability. And sustainability has three bigger elements, which are overlapping with each other. And the inter action within these three elements is what we call sustainable countries, sustainable goals or sustainable programs or strategies we develop, we call it's sustainable, because of the three elements interacting, which is the social, environment and economic. Now, since the United Nations issued the Sustainable Development Goals, the world globally, the countries they're aligning themselves with these SDGs by 2030, most of these goals they target to achieve and that's how the countries entirely globally, they are developing their visions, which are aligning with this vision, United Nations vision. On the same note, Saudi Arabia, they develop their 2030 vision and they have incorporated all the requirements within the plan. For example, some of the targets which KSA under their vision 2030 They have developed is basically related to health or living healthy being healthy, like for example, to increase the ratio of the people individuals who are exercising, which for the time being is a once a week, basically, they are individuals, they want to increase it to 40%. So, almost three times they would like to increase the health and living standard of the people who are there in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, same is the case with developing cities safety is one important element. And when we talk about the security and safety they these are interchangeable words, when we are talking in terms of the cities. So a safe city is a secure city and it's secured city is also supposed to be a safe city. So, they are developing their cities. And that would involve a lot of construction and operation of facilities, of course and these construction activities and their management later on how they manage these operation of facilities the should be all safe in terms of safety standards and safety requirements. So the Libya is currently 19th largest economy, they would like to develop themselves into one of the 15 economies and for that one, they need lots of development and that development includes all the safety and health elements built into it. If these are not built into it, they cannot achieve the position within the 15 economies one of the target which they have set as the localization of oil and gas sector. So what happens is that although they have upstream midstream and downstream industry, very well established and they are part of the global economy in terms of what they export, but most of their equipment machines, they are coming from outside, so they do not have the expertise of manufacturing it within Kingdom of Saudi Arabia right now that the manufacturing ability is around four 80% So, they would like to increase 75%. So, these are the targets basically, once they start increasing their localization. So, those activities operation processes under which they are doing the localization, they should be safe in terms of the safety standards, which they are going to implement to ensure that there are no incidents and no accidents, which happens while they are moving from 40% to 75%.

Georges  05:29

That's very interesting thought. Under that note, we were initially talking about the UN SDGs. And out of them, a lot of let's say mega trends have have formulated and come out within within the industry and, and we always hear a lot of these mega trends or let's say terms that come into it. So, keeping that in mind, can you share with us some of the latest mega trends, but that are specific to health and safety transformations?

Tahir  05:57

Very good question. I mean, I think this is what basically the world the developed world, they are making maximum advantage of these megatrends when we transform and there are tools available, there are apps available, which are soft tools, which are available, which can be used to expedite this process or or basically to use them in a way that it saves times resources and other things, which are very crucial, which are supporting the transformation project. One of them like transformative technologies are common these days, like artificial intelligence, robotics, automation data, and monitoring, data monitoring is also I mean, part of the transformative technologies and the the concept is that we we are using it to assess the risks, which we face in terms of health and safety, and try to minimize it as low what we call it as low as possible, and use these artificial intelligence tools and robotics to gain maximum benefit towards the transformations. The next one is the advanced data analytics, I mean, we have been seeing lots of data per year meant and monitoring tools, where these are, then the data is gathered, information is generated based on the information knowledge is generated. And that knowledge is used to do the analysis and predict what type of accidents may happen in future and how to develop the controls for them before they happen, and work on these controls to ensure that these never happen linked to this one are basically the heart of the transformation system is that we train our employees, we train the employees within the organizations and give them enough awareness, how to detect issues or to go and see what type of near misses out there. And these transformation technologies and data analytics will help us to predict a certain pattern or the period of time where we would be able to address the issues which may arise in future in terms of incidents, accidents, and all safety and health related issues, even occupational health related issues, occupational safety related issues. So all these are basically part of the data analytics and this is how the organizations are benefiting from this, then expand expanding the risk horizon. This is another important element, the physical risk, we are very much used to it, we are addressing these on a day to day basis. But soft rates are still comparatively a new field, which we don't address into our system. So those needs to be now part of the risk management process. So software is like stress for the mental health, well being that that severely impacts our safety on the job of the job. So we are mostly on the job it it really impacts our safety and it really impacts the our transplant mission program in terms of that, so if people are healthy transformation will be healthy. So that's how we need to expand our risk horizon. So that physical as well as our prescod included workplace demographics. So we use computer based trainings, visual training aids, and all these basically, we take benefit of in terms of making that transformation. One at a quicker pace. So what we used to do in the past, these should be replaced by the computer based trainings and visual aids that help us to transform much more quickly as compared to the manual aids which we were using the past safety models pression farm perspective on safety theories. So, over a period of time, because the developed world has been practicing safety for a long time, and there are many best practices available. And based on those best practices, the the models have been developed. So one of the typical model is like, which is a very proven model, which we use for safety is a plan, do check model. So we call it system model. So first we plan and then we implement, then we check ourselves and then we act upon our checking output. So this is what basically the safety models they're using these days. However, based on our experience, we can always challenge these theories. Because when we transform into an organization with operational excellence, we are in a much better position to challenge these theories and come up with the models and theories which are much more resilient, and much more robust in nature.

Georges  11:29

Thank you very much star for the summary, you really touched on a lot of points showing that in this evolving world, we really need to keep up with these mega trends, you know, whether that's been technology, you know, awareness about the the soft risks that as you rightfully said they're growing more day by day and we can see that at work in our daily lives. And in addition to you know, even the let's say the academic or scientific part that comes up to models and whatnot, that really shows how you know crucial these are two HLS transformations and on that notes, how or what would be the main driver for organizations to undertake H and S transformations.

Tahir  12:08

The only thing which which basically drives the organization's thesis towards HSE transformation or health and safety transformation mission is their incident data incident record. So, as long as they are experiencing very small incidents, they are not pushed towards a health and safety transformation or transformation, the moment they come across something which is very drastic, which is a catastrophic event happening in that organization, then they start thinking of the transforming their culture as a proactive organization, they are always moving towards change and that change is taking them towards transformation. So, their change basically is not the change which we discussed earlier, like a small change which can be reverted back not their change means that they would like to change as an organization's and transform themselves into something which other organization would be looking at them in terms of leadership for health and safety and other basically support which they could extend in terms of health, safety, environmental, any any other field which they have transformed into as a operational excellence model. So, major accident is one of the main cause, which causes the organizations to move towards the transformation or HSE performance is another factor, because in terms of SDGs, and local visions, and all that fun national level, regional level visions, which the countries are developing the organization's they have to open themselves, they have to be transparent. And when they are transparent, they are sharing their data, incident data and all that. And when they share their data, which is not good, which is poor data, their image suffers a lot. And they're the repetition and the image basically, that suffers a lot and they start thinking it's sort of complex, which eventually they develop and that inferiority complex basically, they forces them towards transformation, that they would like to improve this image and reputation. Another factor, which is basically a desire to differentiate from other organizations, this is very few in very few organizations and this is also a very proactive approach. So it lot depends on the leadership within the organization. They set the tone for this one. So these are basically the three main drivers, which normally force says organizations to move towards health and safety transformation.

Georges  15:04

Thanks for that, I really liked the way you really broke it down in terms of that the main driver and all cases is actually the data or the incident data. And that really impacts the reputation and whether an organization wants to be reactive or proactive, there are certain drivers to them and that case, so, that was that was very insightful indeed and and thanks for sharing this. so on. On that note, if an organization is planning to undertake an H and S transformation, what are the main aspects that they should consider as part of that?

Tahir  15:38

Good, very good question. George. And let me start with the definition of culture, it's basically the way of life specially the general beliefs of a particular group of people or organization at a particular time, this is the normal standard definition of culture. Now, if you break it down this definition, it talks about general beliefs means it talks about the values, it talks about the commitments within organizations, it talks about the overall vision of the organization. And so, this is one of the important elements within the which needs to be considered while undertaking a HS transformation. Organizational, that's what we call organization, because as they improve and go towards developing their culture or improving their culture, their organizations, they become more robust in terms of safety practices, which they are for them, because in order to achieve a cultural change or improvement in a safety culture, the continuous work has to be done. And that continuous work is not supposed to be stopped at any time, even when they maintain or when they achieved that level of safety culture which they would like to achieve. For example, in the bad liquor yards, you'll you're very much accustomed to the breadmaker. So the breadmaker the basic premise for that Bradley curve is that whenever we are going to improve safety culture, it's going to bring down our incident rate or incidents in in a much simpler way, the incidents, number of incidents should reduce and the culture improves. So, these are both related to each other, but as you go along and you achieve the highest level of the safety culture, you don't stop there, because you need to continue work on that one on that organizational culture, what you see in order not only to maintain it to further improve, further improve and achieve operational excellence, so that people and other organizations, they look towards your organization as an organization, which is best in terms of doing job with that fun, looking towards that organization as a leader in health and safety and the components which are part of the health and safety transformation. So, this is one thing, the other thing, the most important one is the resources. So people equipment, technologies, budgets, these needs to be there. So, why these are important, because if we are short of resources, we cannot undertake the transformation. So, in order to have the transformation effective, and continuous, we need to look into planning for the resources in terms of how many people we need, how many budget, how much budget we need, what equipment we be what technologies we should employ in order to achieve this transformation. Then the last one, the third one, which I would, which is I would say the mother of all is the systems policy. So the organizational culture and the resources, these will be part of the systems but why it's important because if any one part of a system is missing, the entire transformation program would bog down. So when we talk about system, we are talking about the policies, procedures, training, education, all these types of which we will later touch upon more details. So these are the three three basic things when we plan for the transformation. We should put focus on these three, three things very deeply.

Georges  19:52

Thank you very much to her once again, you really simplified it and broke it down and we can see the hierarchy in there in terms of the flow that Howie first and foremost, we should focus on the organizational culture as that would be the main driver that would initiate the whole transformation. And that would eventually be backed up with the resources because the transformation will not take place if you don't have sufficient resources and and finally, as you said, you know, the mother of all and brings everything together is really having that foundation are the systems that will lock everything in place and ensure that it is sustained on the long run. And there was a lot of emphasis on organizational culture and even defined culture. So, what I would like to ask is, how can you actually measure culture,

Tahir  20:37

there are basically three main elements of the safety culture. So, when we talk about the model and of the element is the psychological, so, we talk about attitudes and perceptions. And that includes basically attitude, attitudes, beliefs, values and perceptions. So, we talk about vision, and we talk about the policies in the beginning also and those basically talks about these attitudes, beliefs, values and perception and how people feel about safety, what is believed, this is the main crux of the psychological element, the second is the organizational element. So, we talk about the structures, guidelines, systems and processes we touched upon the system. So, here under the organizational element, we talk about these systems as well processes as well. So, as the system, when we when we refer to system you're talking about, again, the same Model Plan, Do Check Act cycle. So, Plan Do Check Act is a complete system in place. So, this could be applied anywhere to any process. So, transformation is not different. So, when we develop our transformation program, we should ensure that organizational element is also very much part of it. And those organizational sub element should include the systems and processes in terms of planning in terms of implementation in in terms of checking ourselves and acting upon our output of the checking action, whether these are reviews, audits and all that fun. The third one is the behavior daily actions. So, like for example, safety actions. So, when typically, as you know, when we go to organizations to measure the safety, culture, cultures, we just observe their actions, how they act, while performing their jobs, their behaviors, we discussed with them, we interviewed them about the safety and then we come up with sort of evaluation in terms of behaviors, what sort of behaviors these organizations are having. So, we are not particularly talking about typical group of people within the organization, we are talking about people across the organization. So that means we are talking about leadership, middle management, lower workers and the people who are actually on the ground working. So all these are included in the behavioral aspects, then how decisions are made basically within an organization. So, this is this comes under the behavioral element also, how is the safety leadership is it at the topmost level only, or it's middle management and functional level, the leadership's are there or only it's at the functional level and upper two are missing. So, these are we we normally very, go in detail and check these ones in terms of these needs to be there in terms of a culture Tron may transformation to happen, these three behaviors or three elements of the safety culture must be there. Another element sub element under the behavior is the safety champions. In a lot of organizations, when we go we find that leadership is there middle management is there, but within the functional within the departments, there are no safety representatives or champions, that is the biggest gap. And with this gap, we cannot move towards transformation because the actual change will happen at the floor level, at the level where people go in in the field and they work that the change will happen from there and it will sort of move up and down So leadership, top leadership is their group management leadership is there. So it's going to be very effective in terms of. So safety champions are another important element of the transformation process. And then another one is competence. So you assign people or you put people there, who are, let's say, safety champions, or middle safety, leadership, and tough leadership. But if these are not competent, it's going to be a big problem. So the change the transformation cannot happen, if you don't qualify them, if you don't train them, if you don't educate them in terms of safety, including the top leadership. So, having a broad vision in terms of safety is a good thing to have, but if the top management is not aware of how basically to drive this down the organization, so it will be either divest of time, it will take much more time as compared to what it should be taking. And sometimes it could fail, it could fire back in terms of the transformation. So, these are important things. So going at the flow level, normally, we see within an organization and we go and see that whether the organization is really transforming themselves in terms of safety, we normally judge that organization in terms of whether the safety is their highest priority or not. And that comes from the top leadership up to the top, the worker level. And then another thing which we normally would like to judge is accountability. So that means if safety KPIs or goals are established, and accountability defined for those ones, if people are not accountable for the actions which they are doing, so it's bound to fail, the transformation will not happen at all, then the decision making, it's like I discussed it, it's very important at the functional level decision making. So if if a job is not safe, is there a decision making process there, can an employee refuse to perform that job because it's not safe, so that has to be at the functional level and people should be empowered to take these decisions, then safety supervisors, they are also important element we look into their role, the support, which they should be receiving from the management, then we also see that the improvement is continuous or not. Another important element which we normally look into is the management communication, how the management communicates cascades is down to the to every employee of the organization that is very crucial to the transformation, risk mitigation measures. So it's not the job of just the safety department to mitigate the risks. So all are involved, it's a teamwork effort. So, once the controller is established, the controls are implemented by the people in the field. So, we normally transformation, the foundation of the transformation basically relies on the risk mitigation measures, employees are part of the regular meeting, we also look into whether they are part of the day to day meetings on safety or not, this is what we look into because this will drive the organization towards transformation and procedures safety procedure I accessible and employee surveys and this show the positive results. So these are these are few and the floor level which I wanted to touch upon. Because the high level culture when we might hear it's something which normally implies sometimes they don't understand. And so when these are translated into specific actions, it's much easier to understand and then it becomes much easier to transform yourself into better culture in terms of

Georges  29:16

safety. Thank you again, for her really again, I would say a complex concept that was broken down into simple you know, simple bits and pieces, which again, three, three main aspects to be considered as part of culture, psychological, behavioral, and organization and we can really see the value of breaking it down into these three and how they all interact because this is really the value when we look at culture assessments, it really allows us to understand where the problem is, and accordingly an accurate prescription or solution or action can be put in place and you highlighted on a lot of relevant points starting from the top of the organization. In terms of, you know, the the awareness and the competence of leadership under commitment when it comes to health and safety, all the way down to the bottom when it comes to, let's say, the floor level staff and how the accountabilities are clear amongst them, and how capacity building and competence is important throughout the whole process. And again, to really be able to sustain all this modern, you know, again, the monitoring and measuring of all this in terms of the culture and everything, all the different aspects to it, should be in place. So, that was a great summary to her and tell her, I really have to thank you very much. I have thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. Just to summarize, we have touched on many, many points that are relevant again, going back to the UN SDGs, and specifically, the case a vision 2030. We touched on why health and safety is such a crucial component of this vision. And we also understood the difference between a change and transformation with the great example that you've given about the table. And more. So we looked into what are the latest mega trends that are relevant to health and safety transformations? And what what drives organizations to undertake these transformations? And what should they consider when they undertake them? And more. So we focused on the, you know, took two main aspects, which really are the organizational culture, understanding what the culture is, how is it measured? And why is it so crucial, again, two transformations, in addition to management systems, which we just ended the discussion with terms of how they are the foundation and how everything integrates within the management system to sustain it. Once again, Paula, thank you very much for your time, and for sharing, you know, all these thoughts and insights. I really hope that our listeners enjoyed it and found it insightful as well. So please tell our audience, thank you again for listening all the way through. And please make sure you leave us a comment if today's episode has sparked your interest. And don't forget to join us in the following talks. So stay tuned. Thank you, everyone.