Taking ownership of safety. What are the active ingredients of safety coaching and how do they impact safety outcomes in critical offshore working environments?

Abstract

Safety coaching interventions have become a common feature in the safety critical offshore working environments of the North Sea. Whilst the beneficial impact of coaching as an organizational tool has been evidenced, there remains a question specifically over the use of safety coaching and its impact on behavioural change and producing safe working practices. A series of 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted with three groups of experts in the offshore industry: safety coaches, offshore managers and HSE directors. Using a thematic analysis approach, several significant themes were identified across the three expert groups including connecting with and creating safety ownership in the individual, personal significance and humanisation, ingraining safety and assessing and measuring a safety coach's competence. Results suggest clear utility of safety coaching when applied by safety coaches with appropriate coach training and understanding of safety issues in an offshore environment. The current work has found that the use of safety coaching in the safety critical offshore oil and gas industry is a powerful tool in managing and promoting a culture of safety and care.

Taking ownership of safety. What are the active ingredients of safety coaching and how do they impact safety outcomes in critical offshore working environments?

“…These included increased priority given to coaching with financial and time resources. This is because many coaches expressed concern that their main role is not viewed as a safety coach, they are also required to fulfil other Krauesslar, V., Avery, R. & Passmore, J. (2015).…”

“…'Explaining to people why intelligent rational human beings get hurt doing the most routine tasks' (SC3). Krauesslar, V., Avery, R. & Passmore, J. (2015).…”

“…This can even be implemented by something as simple as a telephone call to debrief. It was also suggested by SC6 that base level counselling training would be Krauesslar, V., Avery, R. & Passmore, J. (2015).…”

What are Czech Coaches Really Doing? A Comparison of Czech and European-Wide Coaching Trends

“…Coaching's origins have seen its spread from sport, (Whitmore, 2002) executive, leadership and business coaching (e.g. Ely et al, 2010;Thach, 2002;Wilson, 2007) to schools (Knight, 2007), sales (Rosen, 2008), tertiary education (Van Nieuwerburgh, 2012), medical and health coaching (Palmer et al , 2003), driver development (Passmore & Velez, 2012), safety critical environments (Krauesslar et al, 2015), to health and wellbeing (Rogers & Maini, 2016). The pace and depth of penetration into different sectors has varied between countries, reflecting the diversity of coaching practice across the world.…”