P1/2
This explored the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of safety management standardisation and how it may affect an organisations’ ability to operate safely in normal conditions and to deal with unexpected events. See here for part 2 of this post.
Data in the form of observations and interviews with offshore and onshore managers and workers in a Norwegian oil & gas company was undertaken. This company had three installations and different structures and was undergoing an extensive change process as it was merged into another company. Due to the merger, management decided to implement a common and standardised operation model. This included standardising work procedures, processes and documents.
Data was collected before and after the merger (over a 1.5 year period).
Given the extensive findings in this study I can only provide a few points – I highly recommend you check out the full paper. I’ve divided this in to two parts.
Results:
Perceived positive benefits of standardisation
Before the merger, workers & managers believed that positive outcomes from standardising work processes etc would be increased onshore support from SMEs, better focus on operations with less administration, and better hands-on management on board, e.g. walkarounds.
Standardisation was perceived to have improved (p5):
- plans and prioritizing of offshore operation and maintenance activities.
- Compliance to the operating procedures of a common governing system.
- Experience transfer through rotation of personnel.
To the first point, a tighter integration b.t. the land & sea organisation was achieved as per plans, with expert competence from land now being used more compared to the previous operating model.
For compliance to procedures, there was a new demand that every worker strictly follows the work processes described in the new governing system.
Job rotation was also seen as a means of standardising norms “thus reducing the cultural variation between installations” (p2006). Interestingly, this effect of standardising to dampen cultural variation is said to actually have been the opposite such that “the positive effects described here seem to have more to do with increased cultural variation on each platform, due to newcomers challenging established practices” (p2006). This may reduce cultural variation across the whole company, but an increase in local variation.
Perceived negative effects of standardisation
Following merging and standardisation, the following negative effects were noted:
- Disempowerment
- Loss of local knowledge
- Increased bureaucracy
- Less hands-on management
For disempowerment, offshore workers experienced less autonomy and participation under the new standardised operating model. With more work being planned by onshore teams, offshore crews lamented “their new role as: ‘‘being handed work orders’’, meaning that their responsibility has been reduced to executing isolated fragments of work processes” (p2006), and also losing sight of the big picture.
The new model of “increased management (being told what to do in more detail) and less empowered” (p2006) impacted workers’ motivation & commitment.
For loss of local knowledge, frequent rotation of personnel was seen to increase the resource for safety where a transfer of experience and lessons learnt across installations could be achieved. However, the loss of specific local knowledge needed to maintain ageing infrastructure was impacted.
Quoting the paper, “The local competence is a system specific competence, which means that the crew possesses deep insight of the tools and technical details on board within and across disciplines”. With frequent rotation this may “challenge the safety in situations where there is need for installation specific competence and experience” (p2006).
For increased bureaucracy, many employees experienced a more bureaucratic company where this reflected “a feeling of having to wait for a permission in order to be able to do their job” (p2007). Jobs that previously took two-hours may now take an entire day according to one employee.
This reflects a sentiment that flexibility was now lost due to standardisation – where before people were more empowered to solve problems within their own field, now they wait to be told and given permission.
For hands-on management, although it was designed to increase the time managers spent in the field and also reduce administrative time for operation & maintenance for workers in contrast “the principles of standardization seem to have backfired on the company” (p2007).
Whereas the centralised planning function was meant to reduce admin time for offshore staff, seems to have actually increased the need for admin and this is said to be probably related to “the split between the planning and execution of operations, which seem to increase the need for communication and coordination between offshore operators and the onshore organization” (p2007).
Overall, it’s said that the negative effects of standardising in this company was reduced leverage for local decision-making, reductions in local knowledge, reduced flexibility and reduced management availability.
Interestingly the authors explain that “Like the positive effects, these issues can be related to the company’s efforts to move from standardization of outputs to the standardization of work processes” (p2007, emphasis added).
Authors: Stian Antonsen, Kari Skarholt, Arne Jarl Ringstad, 2012, Safety Science
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2011.11.001
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/role-standardization-safety-management-case-study-major-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 