Safety is everything here!

Being in an oil & gas business and running a highly hazardous operation, safety is uncompromising value in this organization. Our approach is behavior-based safety which rests on the principle that what we are seen doing reflects the value we hold. In our plant, safety shoes and safety helmet are minimum Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) requirement. You must wear them to go into non-bonded area of the plant else you are violating the Health Safety and Environment (HSE) regulations and can be severely fined. Safety is our business, in fact everyone's business, from the company's driver who holds the lowest job grade in the organization all the way up to Plant General Manager and CEO, HR people like me not excluded. Safety slogans are everywhere - at main entrance, at parking lots, at Surau, at walkways, at Cafeteria, even in meeting rooms. "Safety, Safety, Safety", " HSE is my responsibility", "We are not in manufacturing business. We are in Safety business", "No job is so urgent that we cannot take time to do it safely", "All accidents are preventable", "Drive safely. Your family is waiting at home", I wanted to think positive all the times but sometimes I cannot help the feeling that HSE is overdone in this organization. Take one example, or two. Climbing up & down the stairs requires you to establish 3 point-contact - 2 feet must firmly be planted on the ground and one hand must touch the stairs' handrail all the times during the flight of going up and down the stairs. Another example - you must always reverse park your car in the company premises. If you are spotted not adhering to the company HSE rules, a report may be lodged against you. You may be punished in some way and the reporter will get rewarded in some way.
Being an HR Manager now with a focus on safe operation I fully support the HSE programs in this organization. You never knew when a disaster will strike. Therefore you must be ready all the times. Just like you never know when you'll be hit by the other driver on the road, therefore you must wear the seat belt all times. Makes sense to me.
When I was an IT Manager, we had a technical change committee who convened regularly to deliberate proposed changes to the computer systems. Hardware upgrades or software installation on the server must go thru this committee of whom I was the Chairman. We looked at all aspects from manpower requirement, the schedule and timing and also the safety aspects. Safety, I must say, was the least important then.

Determining staff potential

In this organization, staff's ultimate potential is one of the important promotion criteria. We call it a current estimated potential or CEP in short which is represented by the the highest job grade the staff could possibly achieve by the the time he retires. Everyone in the executive position has the CEP rating.

CEP rating is determined by the qualities demonstrated by an employee in the areas such as adaptability, learning agility, drive, realistic imagination, judgement, interpersonal influence and empathy. Evidence must be cited to substantiate the rating for each quality. You must convince the panel members that your staff had done this and that and when and whats the final result were before the rating is agreed. In general three elements make up the good evidence: situation or task assigned (ST), action taken (A) and the result (R), or we call it STAR evidence.

But CEP has proponents and opponents. Will talk later about that.

By the way, CEP rating is revised every two years in this organization. For individual staff, the rating could go up or down normally by a single job grade. If the difference is higher, the management has to study why.

I think it is a good HR tool, else everybody will be fighting for the a limited places at the top of the pyramid.