Global Standards for Health and Safety

A major piece of research, commissioned by international skills body - OPITO, has revealed that the industry is in overwhelming support of common global standards for health and safety training. The findings of the research, which was conducted by the Aberdeen Business School at the Robert Gordon University, show that a lack of consistency and variations in regional approaches to training are barriers to achieving competency and changes in behaviour.

Due to be launched at OPITO's first global Safety and Competence Conference in Abu Dhabi on Thursday 25th November, the study, entitled Beyond the Barricades, sought to provide in-depth understanding of the ways in which training is delivered, how it adds values to those operating internationally, the means that are used to measure that value and the significance for companies of international standards in achieving improved safety and competency.

Almost 97% felt that uniform global industry standards would result in higher standards, improved workforce mobility, efficiency, quality of training and capabilities in the workforce, increased ability of companies to respond to incidents, trade globally and to benchmark training, and greater capacity for organisations to assess and share resource requirements as well as reductions in training costs.
The main barrier to achieving global standards was the variety and complexity of existing standards. Others were culture, language and climatic requirements as well as the confusing number and varying roles of regulatory bodies and organisations.

The solution, according to respondents, is to develop an effective global standard that is flexible and takes account of local operational environments. Increased communication and awareness, high quality instructors, continual auditing, familiar frames of reference and improving a culture of personal awareness were all cited as ways of overcoming the barriers.

Over 60 senior figures from multi-national, national and independent oil companies as well as service companies in Europe, the Middle-east, Africa, Australasia, North America and South America were interviewed.

The need for a competent workforce was a key influencer in the development of health and safety and emergency response training programmes but respondents placed greater emphasis was on the need to comply with legislation and regulation.

The report also demonstrated that there was a lack of commonality and sophistication in determining the quality and effectiveness of training. The most common measurement of success was participant feedback, with change in behaviour and reduction in accidents also being cited. Many respondents acknowledged that they did not gather metrics and found measurement too difficult to quantify.
Measuring the cost of health and safety and emergency response training was difficult with the only measures being actual costs of delivery and allocated staff hours spent in training. Organisations are generally unable to estimate the costs of not training.