Improving the Safety Culture by Strengthening Leadership Skills - 16563
- CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company, Richland, WA 99352 (United States)
As a primary contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CH2M) is managing a team of approximately 1,400 employees at the Hanford Site in Southeast Washington. The work on this 10-year, $5.7 billion contract ranges from design and construction to decommissioning and cleanup. In 2013, CH2M began the second half of its contract and expanded its leadership development program to focus on succession planning and strengthening the leadership skills of its employees. The goal is to create and sustain qualified leaders to lead the Hanford cleanup mission today and into the future. CH2M launched the Leadership Impact Initiative, a training program modeled from best practices used at other CH2M projects, including the Idaho Cleanup Project. Based on the results of a CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company site-wide safety culture survey, the company developed an improvement strategy focused on leadership development with emphasis on the front-line leadership. The strategy stresses core leadership principles and skill development to help managers more effectively engage the workforce. The two-day workshop gives employees the opportunity to build leadership on the job in an audience of their peers. CH2M expanded the workshops to include employees from all levels of the organization, including bargaining unit employees. The workshops are reinforced at quarterly all-manager meetings, communications among team members and regular sharing of lessons learned and experiences in the field. The Leadership Impact Initiative advances CH2M's vision of quality leadership and project delivery anchored by health and safety performance excellence. Since 2013, CH2M hosted more than 25 Leadership Impact Initiative workshops, reaching approximately 500 participants. Meanwhile, the company achieved the best safety record since the start of its contract, and results from its 2015 safety culture survey show improvements in the safety climate. A DOE assessment of the CH2M worker health and safety culture for the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) found the workshop was a contributing factor to the contractor achieving VPP Star and VPP Star of Excellence Status. This paper summarizes the strategy behind the leadership development program, the outcomes and its relevance for other companies, particularly those on DOE Environmental Management decommissioning projects. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22838325
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-19-WM-16563; TRN: US19V1518083680
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2016: 42. Annual Waste Management Symposium, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 6-10 Mar 2016; Other Information: Country of input: France; available online at: http://archive.wmsym.org/2016/index.html
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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