Professional development - The health and safety myth

Rachel Lawler attends the 2nd Annual European Offshore Health and Safety Conference at Charing Cross in London, UK.

The stereotype of the lonely, bearded offshore worker is a difficult one to shake off. Almost as difficult to get past is the health and safety worker typecast as a busybody with little better to do than pester hard-pressed workers. But the reality of work in the oil and gas sector is a more complex picture than many people assume. Afternoon speakers at the 2nd Annual European Offshore Health and Safety Conference in London, UK, looked at the psychological factors affecting health and safety in the oil and gas industry.

Dr Tom Reader, Lecturer in Organisational and Social Psychology at The London School of Economics, explained the psychological factors that can lead to accidents. ‘Everybody talks about safety culture, but accidents still happen,’ he said. Many workers have a confidence bias – whereby their belief that they are working safely overrules conflicting evidence, such as meter readings and other subtle clues. ‘People’s threshold for raising the alarm is very much dependant on the organisation,’ he added, citing staff reluctance to disrupt production when they are less than 100% certain that there is a problem.

Reader also noted the impact of health and safety’s bad reputation among staff. Too many workers write off safety procedures as a waste of time, particularly in less critical environments where many assume that they are safe. ‘People are sick of being told how to behave and what to do,’ Reader claimed.

Craig Jackson, Professor of Occupational Health Psychology at Birmingham City University, UK, also explained the effects of employees’ attitudes towards safety procedures. ‘You’re dealing with so much cynicism when you’re just trying to keep people alive and healthy,’ he said.

Jackson also explored the psychology of remote working and noted workers’ reluctance to admit when they’re having problems. ‘People are bored of stress surveys and stress isn’t a term many oil and gas professionals like to use.’ Jackson defined remote working as any job that involves fewer than four hours of face-to-face contact each week and estimated that this term applies to one million employees in the UK. Whether located on an offshore oilrig or simply working from home, solitary work has a major impact on a worker’s health, particularly psychologically.

But the effects of remote working can also be physical. ‘Isolated workers are more likely to let themselves go,’ explained Jackson. ‘Without colleagues watching, workers tend not to have just a couple of biscuits but the whole packet,’ said Jackson.

However, the message on remote working wasn’t completely negative. ‘You’ve got to remember that people actively choose their careers and working environments. They don’t just fall into these jobs,’ Jackson said. ‘Many people choose offshore work as a method of escaping,’ he added, and indicated that workers often report positive effects of this kind of work, including better customer or client relationships and having a greater amount of ‘me time’.

So overall the take-home message was quite positive, despite the bad reputation that health and safety seems to have acquired. As Wells Grogan, Vice President HSE at Maersk Oil, headquartered in Denmark, said ‘At the end of the day health and safety is about protecting people,’ making it an essential part of all work places, but especially important in potentially dangerous offshore locations.  

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