HSE Perception Survey
Each of our employees and contractors plays a critical role in our HSE performance, and in establishing and maintaining a safety-oriented workplace. We therefore conduct HSE Perception Surveys every three years, confidentially surveying our staff to learn about their perceptions of 10 overarching safety climate factors:
- Management Commitment
- Team Functioning
- Morale
- Supervisor Commitment
- Incident Outcomes
- Personal Responsibility for Safety
- Competency
- Organizational Commitment
- Fair Culture
- Safety Procedures
The survey:
- Provides a snapshot of staff perceptions about how safety is being managed
- Tracks the health of our Safety Culture across Vermilion over time
- Encourages employees and contractors to participate in and contribute to safety programs and initiatives
- Communicates throughout Vermilion our key strengths and areas for improvement, and
- Feeds into the HSE Plan and focuses the organization on critical items, ensuring a practical program
To date, we have conducted surveys in 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022. This provides the timeframe required to clearly understand the outcomes, and effectively plan and implement the actions required to respond to or address the findings.
All surveys received a staff response rate of over 85%, creating a solid baseline measure of staff perceptions of how we are managing safety.
In all four surveys, all factors received favourable scores (above 3.5/5), with particular strengths in personal responsibility for safety, and the commitment to safety at the management, organization and supervisor levels. Staff identified opportunities for improvement as well, and we continue to mine the data and work to better understand the results and use those learnings to identify focus areas.
The 2013 survey resulted in the implementation of our Fair Culture policy in Canada in 2014, and subsequent rollouts in our other business units, in response to feedback that Vermilion’s incident investigation and resolution process was not sufficiently clear.
Other examples of actions taken as a result of the survey feedback include advancement of our Competency Programs and updates to our Event Management Practice.
The 2016 survey highlighted training and competency programs, along with communications, as areas where we could improve, including making HSE documents and procedures easier to find, and improving our incident management software. As a result, we began a project to identify alternatives for and select a new Event and Environmental Management Information System (EEMIS).
The 2019 survey showed overall positive trending, while identifying areas to improve that included making our safety procedures easier for people to understand and use and additional focus on training and development, communication, and mental health. We successfully developed and implemented our new reporting software, and focused on communicating workplace and personal safety.
In 2021, our People and Culture department launched Vermilion’s mental health and wellness program, including a business-wide, online mental health support program called Not Myself Today, which provides 24/7, confidential access to a wide range of education and resources for staff and leaders.
We are now implementing the detailed findings on communication and training from our 2022 survey, use in the action planning process across the company.
