Safety Professional Spotlight
Your work at AON brings you into contact with many different organizations. In your experience, what impact does a strong safety culture have on an organization's success? Can you share any examples -- good, bad, or otherwise?
Strong safety culture is such an important component of organizational success in many ways, and particularly in any industry where there is an exposure to physical operational risk like the towing industry. In terms of impact on organizational success, a strong safety culture drives stronger safety performance and reduced lost time, which leads to an organization becoming a more attractive insurance risk, a more attractive business/trading partner, and a more attractive place to work. The latter can also be significant in solving for the challenge of attracting and retaining top crews/talent.
A great example of strong safety culture is an organization where all employees are empowered through supported accountability to not just exercise stop work authority on discovery of an unsafe condition or observing unsafe behavior, but to take ownership and resolve it. In other words, employees proactively correct the condition or behavior, as a matter of standard operation, or "the way we do business." It requires behavioral assertiveness and that comes from employees understanding that safety is fundamental to everything the organization does and is supported from C-Suite down to the deck plate level.
What are some of the safety-related challenges your customers and partners face today, and what actions can safety managers take now to address these challenges?
I'll focus on two: emerging technology and crewing/talent retention. But there are many more.
We're in an era of rapidly emerging technologies, and while I am quite bullish on the potential positive safety impacts, they also come with challenges. New technology needs the training to go with it, and of course, the establishment of back-up operational and procedural redundancies should the technology fail. Ultimately, well-trained, skilled, and prepared employees are still the most important link in the safety success chain.
But considering the human element is so often an identified incident causal factor, some emerging technology applications have real potential for positive safety impact. For example, remote or AI technology that eliminates personnel exposure to hazards, provides data-based decision support during critical/emergency navigation operations, removes need for personnel on watch to perform fatigue-inducing tasks, or that can identify real-time actionable near-miss safety intervention opportunities are attractive propositions.
With any new technology, it is critical for safety managers to risk-assess the technology so as to understand use intent, capability limits, whether new risks are introduced (and new controls required), new training needs, and required updates to associated operations, safety and training policies.
Secondly, crewing (and hiring generally) remains a challenge across maritime. But linking this back to the first question, we have real-world client examples of strong organizational safety culture and performance positively impacting both attraction and retention of skilled and behaviorally safe talent. From a safety manager's perspective, the challenge is ensuring that your organization's core safety values and culture are embedded early on from first-hire, and that often requires particular attention and focus on those new-hires for at least the first 12 months.
You have been highly successful in your career! Can you share how you came to work in marine risk and any advice you have for someone considering the maritime transportation industry as a career?
Candidly, marine risk engineering and loss control is not a career path I sought out! After graduating with a naval architecture degree, I spent 4 years at a shipyard in the UK which was also my first involvement in operational safety. While the shipyard was a UK Navy nuclear licensed facility with an extremely strict regulated process and engineering controls, otherwise it was in a more developmental, evolving phase of its safety culture journey.
Relocating to the US in 2010 as a marine surveyor/engineering consultant, I built vessel and maritime operations experience through investigating vessel and dock damages, crew injuries, and cargo damages, providing loss prevention surveys, and performing salvage of naval architecture. I also took advantage of safety and accident investigation training opportunities whenever I could.
In 2016 I came shoreside to manage marine loss control programs for a commercial insurer, which for me was key to understanding insurers' perspectives on safety when underwriting marine risks. Since joining Aon in 2019, this collective experience (and a forward-thinking management team!) has allowed me to be a part of building marine risk engineering capability within our US marine broking practice, which has been a tremendous career path evolution I did not see coming 20 years ago!
My advice to others? I'm not sure there has been a more exciting time to be in maritime and in maritime risk/safety management. It is a time of rapid technology development and emerging supply chain opportunity and risks, within the context of the vital importance of safe and sustainable operation and maintenance of our marine transportation and infrastructure.
So dive in, treat all experience as good experience, be open, ask questions, and contribute - it will be a rewarding voyage!
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