I recently watched the movie, Deepwater Horizon, together with my officemates. More than the usual team bonding, we wanted to see this movie because we work in a company that is part of the oil industry.
The movie is about one of the largest oil spills in history and choosing this movie will help us be more aware of the challenges in operating oil companies.
An eye opening disaster
It is an eye opening disaster. In the course of the movie, two important things were evident, which could have had a large impact in preventing a massive destruction: Safety and Empowerment of employees.
In the first part of the movie, as the main characters arrived in the onshore rig, they were greeted by technicians who are leaving the rig and confirmed that there was no testing done in one of the wells. They fled the rig as ordered by the BP (British Petroleum) executives, mainly because they were already days behind the planned completion.
The General Operational Supervisor Jimmy Harrell and Chief Electrical Engineer Mike Williams left under protest because they were only thinking of safety. As a result, they conducted similar tests, which eventually blew up the BOP (Blowout Preventer), a secondary means of well control.
Failing to empower employees
Another point that has a large impact on the explosion is the empowerment of employees to execute an action even in this massive incident. Andrea Fleytas, a crew member, decided to push the button to prohibit more damage but somebody stopped her because she had no authority to do it even in that situation.
The incident could have been avoided if the different companies/operators involved exercised leadership and valued the safety of the employees and most especially the environment.
A safety mindset
As part of a company in the oil industry, we have safety processes in place. Although I am under the HR organization, and not involved in the core operations, we are still guided by the same safety principles.
Everything we do, whether these are process documentations, checklists, safety manuals, etc., we must have a safety mindset. We were trained to prioritize safety because in the end, whatever our action is, it will affect the organization. In my responsibility to ensure the quality of employee data in the system, I contribute to the reliability of the systems that the company has.
Ensuring well-being
For employee empowerment, we all have the equal authority to Stop Work if we have identified it to be a potential issue. In supporting the HR systems, we stop groups from further manipulating data if we can see possible loopholes that could cause an incident, especially if it would affect employee reports.
Given these processes in place by our company, I feel that we are in a way lucky that the company takes care of its employees because then they, in turn, conduct safe operations. And because I believe that our aim is to conduct safe operations, we are doing it not only to care for the environment and to provide globally safe products, but also to ensure our continued well-being, from both a financial and HR perspective.
The author is an MBA student at the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business. This essay is part of a journal she kept in fulfillment of the requirements of the course, Lasallian Business Leadership with Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics. Visit her blog at https://criseldamarie.wordpress.com/.
The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty, and its administrators.
