Ending on a positive: Examining the role of safety leadership decisions, behaviours and actions in a safety critical situation

Assessing the effects of safety leadership, employee engagement, and psychological safety on safety performance

INTRODUCTION

The study assessed the impact mechanisms of employee engagement and psychological safety in safety leadership and safety performance relationships.

METHOD

We collected 539 valid responses from contract miners using a multi-wave survey research design. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the structural equation model (SEM) and hierarchical regression analysis (HRA) in AMOS and SPSS version 26 software. We used SEM to examine our proposed framework's main and structural mediation effects. HRA was used to test the moderation effect of our framework.

RESULTS

From the SEM results of our study, safety leadership significantly and positively influenced all two dimensions of safety performance-safety compliance and safety participation -- and all three dimensions of employee engagement-vigor, dedication, and absorption. Also, vigor, dedication, and absorption partially mediated the relationship between safety leadership and safety compliance, but fully mediated the safety leadership-safety participation relationship. From the HRA results, psychological safety significantly moderated two employee engagement variables (thus, vigor and dedication) and safety compliance. Also, it moderated all three variables of employee engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption) and safety participation.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

This current study highlights the importance of examining safety leadership on specific job performance, such as safety performance. It also highlights the necessity of having psychological safety and enhancing employee engagement in the mines.

Resilience in emergency management: Learning from COVID-19 in oil and gas platforms

Emergency management, both in civilian and military context, is regarded as a complex socio-technical system, whose dynamic nature and complexity require a holistic approach. Over time, scholars developed diverse strategies and methods to capture such complexity and effectively design emergency plans for more or less severe disasters scenarios. Nonetheless, planning is not always an omni-comprehensive task, pushing organizations to stretch their adaptive capacities in dynamic and challenging settings. This manuscript explores such adaptive capacity as put in place by a leading Norwegian organization in providing emergency management solutions, facing unexpected challenges (at the time of the event): handling of Covid-19 infection episodes on offshore oil platforms. The study, conducted through the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) highlights the relevance of organizational learning which allows to handle emergencies by adapting plans to the specific context and by renewing new emergency management procedures derived from lessons learned. The study focuses on three different Covid-19 infection management cases to understand the nuances of actions and emerging adaptations that led to the development of a revised emergency plan, seen again through the lens of FRAM. While the methodological approach refers to Covid-19 infection management, we believe it can be extended into larger crisis management, providing a use case for the applicability of FRAM into emergency management scenarios.

Many model thinking in systems ergonomics: a case study in road safety

In complexity science, the many models thinking philosophy argues for a multi-method approach to complex problems. This article investigates whether the use of multiple systems ergonomics methods to examine the same problem is useful, or whether using different approaches creates incompatible analyses. Five systems ergonomics analyses of road trauma are examined and their key insights extracted. The extent to which these insights are compatible with one another and can be integrated when attempting to reduce road trauma is assessed. The findings indicate that applying several systems ergonomics methods to the same problem is useful, as multiple insights are developed and deficiencies in one approach are countered by the others. Importantly, the case study demonstrates that the insights gained are compatible and support the development of holistic systems thinking-based interventions. In conclusion it is recommended that a many systems ergonomics model thinking approach be adopted by ergonomists working in complex problem spaces. Practitioner Summary: Many model thinking uses multiple methods to understand complex problems. We explore whether this is beneficial in systems ergonomics. Five models of road trauma, developed using five systems ergonomics methods, are examined. The findings demonstrate that a many model systems ergonomics approach produces a diverse but complimentary set of insights.