Safety Leadership

Safety Leadership is a working lifestyle that is enhanced by a high level of refinement, experience and practice. It’s that special set of safe values, beliefs and a shared vision that provides hope, direction, inspiration and motivation to employees at all levels of the organization. More importantly, it involves taking real action on communicating those values and beliefs that really propels the organization to superior health and safety performance. Any individual, and every individual at P&O has the ability within themselves to become a safety leader, we only need to believe it within ourselves and make the conscious effort to make it happen.

As leaders in the marine industry, we’re aware of some of the major maritime disasters around the globe such as the Costa Concordia grounding. Now these incidents, amongst others, caused tremendous loss of life, property damage leading to massive insurance claims, environmental damage, and loss of reputation for the companies involved. So we investigate to try to learn from them as much as we can, and then look inwards at our own organization to see if we may be repeating the same mistakes. I’ve been through a number of investigations where the quick response has been to point fingers and lay blame upon the Captain. When one ‘digs’ deeper, while keeping an open mind, there are likely several inherent failures within the system that can be attributed to a lack of controls, lack of supervision, weak competency assurance and so on. A question that can be asked is, how do we refocus the organization’s safety strategy, systems, and its culture to prevent this from happening? The answer lies within safety leadership.

A number of years ago, I had the good fortune of having worked alongside a great Executive Vice President by the name of Carl Annessa. Although Carl never sailed the seas, he had a strong operational background, and a great eye for detail and was always on top of his “game.” One cold evening Carl drove me 3 hours to the port and we jumped on at least 15 different vessels. (Keep in mind that when I say jumped, I really mean we held onto the handrails and walked safely up the gangway!) We sat down with the Captain, Engineer and the entire crews and I listened to Carl intently as he lay down his expectations on safety performance before eager listening ears. He shared his message on vessel after vessel, taking notes as he went along, listening to the employee’s safety concerns and getting feedback about how the vessel and the company was doing. On the 3 hour drive back to New Orleans, at about 2am in the morning, I turned to him and asked, “Carl, why do you do this?” He said to me “Andre, I do this on a regular basis, not because I have to, but because I care about the people and the company and I need others to care…so I set the right example. Look, I’m afraid of the consequences if I don’t!” Carl encouraged that sort of interaction with fleet with all of his senior managers, superintendents and supervisors throughout the company and today that company remains a very safe, profitable and respected organization. Leadership by example clearly demonstrates senior management commitment and involvement. This is vital to ensure successful health and safety performance.