Report
Jan. 8, 2024
Leading in personnel safety
Report
Jan. 8, 2024
In this section
We have long embedded safety into our culture, reinforced by leadership, standards, practices, and experience. We focus on an integrated framework of systems, processes, tools, and behaviors aimed at eliminating injuries and fatalities. We aspire to a working environment where Nobody Gets Hurt, and our Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR) demonstrates results from our top tier safety programs. In 2022, we maintained industry-leading personnel safety performance1 with a LTIR of 0.02 per 200,000 work hours.2 We plan to build on this industry-leading position.
Approach
We are committed to protecting the safety, security, and health of our employees, our contractors, and others involved with our operations, as well as our customers and the public. These commitments are documented in the Safety, Health, Environment, and Product Safety policies found in our Standards of Business Conduct.
Our work in this area is put into practice through Operations Integrity Management System, or OIMS, which guides the daily activities of our global workforce by setting clear expectations for managing the risks inherent to our business. The OIMS framework goes beyond our employees to include third-party providers and contractors. We include specific safety and health expectations in contractual agreements.
We focus on continuous improvement through OIMS and leaders engage with their teams to drive effective application. Each business unit has leadership management systems and work processes aimed to consistently meet operations objectives.
Objectives
At ExxonMobil, care for our workforce is a core value and foundational to what we do. Guided by Nobody Gets Hurt, we continue to drive process improvements that support our safety vision, further enhancing our protocols and incorporating international best practices. For example, our Incident Investigation Framework is consistent with International Oil & Gas Products (IOGP) 621 and incorporates enhanced investigation techniques and learning standards.
Beyond working to align our safety protocols with international best practices whenever appropriate, ExxonMobil has implemented additional initiatives in recent years focused on preventing serious injuries associated with lifting and rigging, as well as working around mobile equipment. These include the development of the Life Saving Rules & Actions program, designed for workers and leaders to verify safeguards are in place before starting work and are maintained throughout execution.
Management and application
We establish annual continuous improvement goals and objectives in a number of areas, including:
- Personnel Safety Management System
- Life-saving rules and actions and Start Work Checks
- Human performance
- Culture of Health
- Training
Personnel Safety Management System
To support our work to reduce or eliminate fatalities and life-altering injuries, and deliver industry-leading safety performance, a cross-functional team worked from 2021 through 2023 to develop a fully integrated, end-to-end safety standard to accelerate the continuous improvement of safety company-wide. The team engaged both internally and externally to discover, benchmark, and evaluate developments in safety best practices, building upon our vast experience in deploying safety systems in challenging environments around the world.
Our Personnel Safety Management System (PSMS) is designed to consistently deliver “safety in the moment” by more effectively managing safeguards before and during higher-risk work by:
- Proactively learning from work.
- Building and validating the safety capacity of our workforce.
- Driving effective safety engagement across interfaces.
- Leveraging the latest human performance concepts.
Reinforcing ExxonMobil’s core value of Care, the PSMS clarifies leadership expectations at every level to teach people how to be safety leaders no matter where they work. It establishes a streamlined personnel safety standard with common language, processes, and tools, prioritizing our efforts by risk and life-altering potential. Though repetition and coaching, we’re further building the safety capacity of our workforce, with a renewed focus on the following objectives:
- Leadership effectiveness.
- Safeguard effectiveness.
- Absence of incidents.
Beginning in 2023, senior leadership is sponsoring and leading global deployment of the PSMS at all company-owned and operated assets, including expanded expectations for contract service providers. Rollout is expected to be complete by the end of 2026.
The key components of PSMS include:
Life-saving rules and actions and Start Work Checks
A core component of PSMS is our Life Saving Rules & Actions (LSRAs). Our employees and contractors work cooperatively to execute the LSRAs for routine work activities that have higher risk elements.
We continue to enhance our LSRA program for higher-risk work activities, such as confined-space entry, safe mechanical lifting, work around mobile equipment, and working at heights. We work with employees and contractors to improve understanding of LSRAs for these higher-risk activities and verify that safeguards are in place before work begins – and throughout the process. Our LSRAs now fully integrate the language of the IOGP Life Saving Rules program (IOGP Life Saving Rules Report 459).
Our LSRA program is further supported by our recently deployed Start Work Checks (SWCs). These checks are designed to help supervisors and crew leaders lead interactive, detailed safeguard verification discussions with their crews for work with higher risk elements before work even begins. Our SWC process is aligned with concepts found in IOGP Start Work Checks Report 459-1.
Human performance
As part of our health and safety program, we have expanded human performance concepts into our operations, including human performance fluency training. Human performance concepts have also been integrated into the new Personnel Safety Management System processes and tools (e.g., pre-task briefing, job safety analysis, task observation). Our approach uses a five-part model to integrate human performance concepts into OIMS and the way we do business.
Culture of Health
To improve the health, quality of life, and productivity of employees, we provide a comprehensive Culture of Health program. This program provides an environment and resources that actively and consistently promote healthy and safe behaviors. This includes encouraging biometric screening, periodic health surveys, access to wellbeing champions, resources to help employees with resiliency, and more.
Training
Our global training system delivers safety, health, and security training to employees. This training system is role-based, which assigns the required training to the right people to build competencies based on their job roles. Once training is assigned, the progress and completion is stewarded, including refresher training. ExxonMobil-specific and other relevant training is shared with contractors and others if required for them to perform contracted services within our facilities. Non-operated joint ventures also have access to certain training materials if they have written agreements with ExxonMobil.
Performance
For 30 years, OIMS has maintained worldwide expectations for addressing risks inherent to our business, including safety risks. Through this disciplined approach, we continue to realize improved personnel safety performance.
Our OIMS process meets the requirements of the ISO 14001/45001 standards as annually certified/attested by Lloyds Register Quality Assurance. The ISO management system helps us further manage potential environmental impacts, fulfill compliance obligations, and identify opportunities for improvement.
We track injuries and illnesses for both employees and contractors, including fatalities, fatal incident rate, lost time incident rate, and total recordable incident rate. This safety performance can be found in our Sustainability Performance Data Table.
From a Lost-Time Incident Rate (LTIR) perspective, our workforce remains the safest among our industry peers, according to industry benchmarks.3 As noted above, in 2022, we maintained industry-leading personnel safety performance with a LTIR of 0.02 per 200,000 work hours.4
Lost-Time Incident Rate (LTIR)1,2
Incidents per 200,000 work hours
FOOTNOTES:
- Industry benchmark: The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) safety performance indicators and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) Report of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses are the Upstream and Downstream industry benchmarks, respectively. IOGP safety performance indicators data converted from incidents per 1,000,000 work hours to incidents per 200,000 work hours. Performance data may include rounding. ExxonMobil analysis of data published by AFPM and IOGP.
- ExxonMobil full-year 2022 performance data as of August 18, 2023. ExxonMobil workforce includes employees and contractors. Performance data may include rounding. Incidents include injuries and illnesses.
- Industry benchmark: The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) safety performance indicators and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) Report of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses are the Upstream and Downstream industry benchmarks, respectively. IOGP safety performance indicators data converted from incidents per 1,000,000 work hours to incidents per 200,000 work hours. Performance data may include rounding. ExxonMobil analysis of data published by AFPM and IOGP.
- ExxonMobil full-year 2022 performance data as of August 18, 2023. ExxonMobil workforce includes employees and contractors. Performance data may include rounding. Incidents include injuries and illnesses.
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