Earlier this year COVID-19 was disrupting our Industry and caused reductions in ‘business as usual’ site staffing levels.  Safer Together published the Remote Safety Leadership Guideline to help supervisors who would normally be on-site alongside their work crews who found themselves temporarily supervise their crews remotely.  This Guideline was well received.  So we’ve updated it for use as a ‘business as usual’ tool.  

During the COVID response we learnt new ways to maintain strong safety leadership.  As we start to emerge from the COVID-19 constraints, there are elements of remote safety leadership that we should maintain or consider strengthening.  

As work starts to ramp up, strong and effective safety leadership is still very important.  This is particularly true where changes to organisational design are still in place or where people are normally working remotely from site.  Safety leadership should always remain a priority that is visibly demonstrated.  It is best to adapt existing processes and tools to ensure we maintain effective safety leadership across sites / workplaces especially during changes to work planning or where execution constraints exist (such as planned turnarounds).  We should focus on reducing admin for on-site leaders (to allow them to get out and have effective safety conversations).

The Remote Safety Leadership Guideline provides suggestions for directly supporting site leaders whilst enabling line of sight for remote leaders to remain connected, and it provides suggested activities which align to the following safety culture framework elements:

  • Ensure Compliance
  • Encourage Team
  • Promote Risk Awareness
  • Involve the Team
  • HSE Team Support

It allows you to choose strategies that will be effective for your site / workplace.  The suggestions are not intended to be exhaustive.  They can be adjusted / improved as needed.  Strategies can be added as relevant, or as processes evolve.   

The Guideline also provides an opportunity to mentor and develop new and emerging leaders.

Contact: [email protected].