Conference addresses practices that promote safety in all work environments
August 29, 2024
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“An organization is either habitually excellent … or it is not. There is no partial habitual excellence.”
— Paul H. O’Neill, Sr., former U.S. Treasury Secretary
More than 200 attendees attended the annual U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Safety Culture Improvement Panel (SCIP) annual meeting and safety culture workshops Aug. 5-8 at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The 2024 SCIP workshop included representatives from the DOE Office of Legacy Management (LM), along with attendees from the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), Sandia National Laboratories, Federal Aviation Administration, Pacific Northwest Nuclear Laboratories, and other organizations. The event addresses the habits and practices that promote strong safety cultures.
Safety culture is described as “an organization’s values and behaviors, which are modeled by its leaders and internalized by its members, serve to make safe performance of work.” Tools and resources like a Voluntary Protection Program, an integrated safety management system, and an emphasis on psychological safety are methods for building a successful safety culture.
LM and LMSP employees from various departments attended sessions to learn how they could add strong safety culture practices to their environments.
LM Director of Site Operations Jay Glascock sat on an executive panel discussing the importance of strong leadership in safety culture, where he shared LM’s “One Team, One Mission” mentality.
“Changing organizational culture doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “It takes years to do, but we’re in a better place because of it.”
Glascock explained that, to either shift or sustain a culture, organizations must have regular touch points and consistent habits across the entire workforce. He reinforced team mentality when it comes to developing partnerships between federal employees, contractors, consultants, and subcontractors.
“All of us are on the same team,” Glascock said. “We support each other, and we accomplish the mission together.”
Earlier in the week, LMSP’s Deputy Director of the Program Management Office Jonathon Graziano presented on psychological safety alongside Julie Goeckner, the senior advisor for Safety Culture with the DOE Office of Environment, Health, Safety & Security. In their presentation, titled “Silence Fails: Unlocking Organizational Excellence Through Psychological Safety,” Graziano and Goeckner identified major pitfalls contributing to organizational silence and taught attendees how to effectively practice “if you see something, say something.”
Leadership, employee engagement, and organizational learning are components to an overall culture of excellence. DOE’s emphasis on safety culture sets the foundation for SCIP, providing cross-organizational leadership focusing on continuous improvement of safety culture, and creates opportunities for DOE workers to exchange information and ideas, and establish, monitor, and sustain measures that support a strong safety culture.
Keynote speeches and breakout sessions focused on building habits of excellence through leadership, employee engagement, and organizational learning.
The opening keynote session featured Paul O’Neill, Jr., chairman of Value Capture, LLC. O’Neill shared a story about his father, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Alcoa Chief Executive Paul O’Neill, Sr., who turned around the safety culture of Alcoa, an industrial corporation that had a high recordable incident rate in the 1980s. O’Neill, Jr., said his father implemented certain practices and helped shift the overall mindset to one of excellence and safety consciousness, leading to a dramatic decrease in Alcoa’s recordable incident rates while the workplace size and culture trended positively.
In his opening keynote address, O’Neill, Jr., said: “Safety isn’t just a priority, it’s a precondition to everything we do.”
Organizational culture is achieved through consistent practice across all levels of an organization, and is championed by strong leadership, engaged employees, and a willingness to learn and continually improve along the course of a mission, he said.
LM has a Safety Culture Improvement Team (SCIT) with LM and LMSP representatives who meet monthly to discuss the many components that create safety culture and how to address emerging issues and concerns. The SCIT’s work is largely influenced by conversations at the annual SCIP workshops and continues throughout the year.