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Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Non peer reviewed)

Safety leadership—Weatherford Asia Pacific*

J. Raine A and R. Massy A
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- Author Affiliations

Weatherford.

The APPEA Journal 51(2) 738-738 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ10118
Published: 2011

Abstract

This paper will explain the steps that Weatherford Asia Pacific took to change a safety performance that had remained static for the preceding five years. Weatherford Asia Pacific has in place five key result areas (KRA):

  1. HSE performance.

  2. Financial performance.

  3. Operational performance.

  4. Growth.

  5. People and resources.

The vice president of Weatherford Asia Pacific, Mr Alistair Geddes, made a decision to personally involve himself in the improvement of the key performance indicators for KRA 1. Believing that leadership was the key to improvement, he set about developing an internal safety leadership training course—this was done alongside the regional learning and development manager Mr Robert Massy. This approach was unique for a variety of reasons:

  1. It was spearheaded by the region’s vice president who not only assisted in the preparation of the slides, but personally delivered five sessions in a variety of countries in the region.

  2. It was linked to the Weatherford International’s five core behaviours, thus linking safety leadership to other corporate initiatives.

  3. It required each leader to complete a personal safety pledge card detailing the activities that they were going to undertake for that performance year.

  4. Completion of their pledges is mandatory and linked to performance review.

  5. It was pushed further down the organisation by the general managers of each Geomarket.

There have been some very positive indicators that point to the success of this approach. For the first five months of the year, Weatherford Asia Pacific remained recordable incident free (though that situation has now changed). An easy solution would have been to bring in an external training provider to deliver an established training course. This was not viewed as the preferred option as the strength of this approach comes from the person who is delivering the message.

John Raine is the regional operational excellence manager at Weatherford—Asia Pacific since 2008. Before joining Weatherford, he was the training and competence team leader at Wood Group between 2007 and 2008. John has interests in the safety leadership and management in the oil and gas industry.

Robert Massy is responsible for Training, Competency and Organization Development for Weatherford in Asia Pacific. He joined Weatherford at the beginning of 2008 from a consulting background where he specialized in talent and leadership development. Originally from Ireland, he has worked and lived in Asia since 2005 and has built and delivered Leadership programs for numerous blue chip organizations across Asia in a variety of industries. His focus today is driving the management and leadership capabilities and building nationalized talent to meet the long-term growth ambitions of Weatherford in this region.

Rob is the lead facilitator of the Safety Leadership initiative workshops.