Maintaining leadership’s accountability for safety

As Aramco reaches 2022, it looks ahead to a number of ambitious projects that will further expand and diversify the business. Throughout all of its operations, one thing is certain: safety comes first for its people and its operations, and the company holds the strongest belief in accountable and visible safety leadership to ensure a culture of safety excellence. 

Loss Prevention’s (LP) Safety Leadership Workshop (SLW) is a core part of the company’s safety leadership training for managers and division heads, but its message resonates throughout the company: leaders take their organizations beyond simply complying with a set of points on a page with a key objective being leadership’s accountability for safety. 

“The personnel who attend this course already have a number of years of operational and leadership experience to reach the position they are in now,” says Jesus Docabo, a Loss Prevention engineer and SLW lead instructor. “The workshop extends the ability of an individual’s safety leadership to positively influence employees’ values, decisions, and day-to-day behaviors.”

Safety systems on common principles

The company’s Safety Management System (SMS) is the structure around which the workshop is formed, and early in the course it is emphasized that while organizations differ in purpose and function, each one is based on management systems that run on the same common principles. 

“If properly structured, all management systems and programs are compatible and complementary,” says Docabo.

LP’s subject matter experts who both develop and instruct the customized workshop, have themselves seen the transition from a more stoic approach when the workshop was first developed, in which the emphasis was almost exclusively on building the SMS throughout the company, but there was no information for leaders on how to lead that. 

While the workshop covers fundamentals in developing departmental safety programs to meet applicable SMS expectations, its twin core is understanding that leaders are the driving force behind that implementation, and personal accountability is key. “Self-managed behavior only occurs when an individual takes on the value of a system or standard as a personal responsibility, and they only do this when leadership clearly embodies the same beliefs and actions,” adds Docabo.

Wide demand for instruction

During 2021, the number of SLW workshops held increased due to demand, with 148 managers and division heads completing the course. 

“We continually strive to maintain our stance as a global leader in safety,” says Ghassan G. Abulfaraj, chief Loss Prevention engineer, “and the strength of leadership within the company is unequivocally a role that ensures we achieve that, and continue to perform at the level needed to drive intended results.” 

Caption:  Ghassan G. Abulfaraj (fifth from right), with attendees from the final Safety Leadership Workshop of 2021.