Celebrating KBR’s Zero Harm Culture

What is Zero Harm? At KBR, it’s a way of life! Since its inception, the platform has resulted in unprecedented global HSSE (health, safety, security and environmental) performance and is also the foundation of KBR’s ESG culture, commitments and initiatives. Ultimately, Zero Harm is about doing what’s right to protect our people, planet, communities and business. This week, host John Arnold is joined by Paul Stephenson, director HSSE, to talk about the journey to Zero Harm and this year’s global Zero Harm Day celebrations, happening on February 22.

Transcript

IN ORBIT A KBR PODCAST

Season 3, Episode 2

Celebrating KBR’s Zero Harm Culture

John Arnold

Hello, I'm John and this is In Orbit.

Greetings one and all. We are so glad you're tuning in for spending part of your day with us and staying in our orbit.

If you listen to the podcast regularly or are at all familiar with KBR, you know that safety and sustainability are a pretty big deal around here. Actually, that's something of an understatement. A commitment to safety and ESG — that's environmental, social and governance principles — permeates everything we do at KBR, from our operations to our supply chain, to the solutions we provide, and that list goes on and on. The foundation of that commitment is a platform we call Zero Harm. With us today to talk about what Zero Harm is, particularly as it pertains to safety, and what it means to KBR, is Paul Stephenson. Paul is the director of HSSE — that's Health, Safety, Security and Environment — and is based at KBR's Office in Leatherhead, Surrey in the UK. Welcome to the podcast, Paul.

Paul Stephenson

Hey, John. Good to be here.

John Arnold

Happy to have you. This is one of the rare instances where I've actually met the person who I'm interviewing on the podcast. Usually it's some person, some expert that I've never met before, and we've only emailed back and forth. So it's nice to be able to relate to someone that I've actually met in person before.

Paul Stephenson

Yeah, no, it was good to see you in back in ... what was it, a couple of months ago now, back here in Leatherhead. So yeah, it was good to meet you in person.

John Arnold

Yes, back in November.

Paul Stephenson

Absolutely. No, it was good. It was good, and a big team. You guys really embraced the HSSE induction that I gave as well, which was good. It was good fun.

John Arnold

Oh, it was awesome. Very, very informative. Well, first of all, why don't you tell us a little about yourself and your role at KBR?

Paul Stephenson

Sure. So I am married with two kids, sort of starting with family, which HSSE professionals always like to do.

John Arnold

Excellent.

Paul Stephenson

So yeah, I'm married to Calista. We have two kids, Ted, who's 11, and Flo, who's about to turn nine. So busy times at home, and outside of work, I kind of like to keep fit and stay healthy just so I can keep up with the kids mostly, but also I find it helps with wellbeing and concentration, et cetera as well. So I do like to keep active outside of work. I've been at KBR for around five and a half years now, and I work for the Integrated Solutions business. So that's headed up by Ahmed Al-Dadah. And we sit within the Sustainable Technology Solutions business unit. So I support our great HSSE leads and managers with the application of HSSE and Zero Harm across the international offices and projects that we have. So that includes Leatherhead, Baku in Azerbaijan, and a number of locations in the Middle East, which is a fast-growing region for us. And then I work very closely with my good friend and colleague, Suresh Kumar, who oversees our APAC [Asia-Pacific] region, including Singapore and Chennai [India]. So yeah, busy times.

John Arnold

Yeah, far reaching! That's outstanding! A big responsibility.

Paul Stephenson

Yeah, absolutely. I kind of look after Leatherhead, in terms of everything to do with HSSE in Leatherhead. So I work with our Real Estate Services team to make sure our lovely campus here in Leatherhead is safe for people to come in and work and that we comply with regulatory requirements, and as well as supporting projects and proposals and delivering trainings. So I'm actually looking to recruit someone to help me look after Leatherhead, cause it's getting pretty busy. Pretty busy. It's good to be back in the office.

John Arnold

We'll have to do a plug at the end of the show that if you're an HSSE professional looking for a good gig to contact Paul.

Paul Stephenson

Yeah, that would be helpful!

John Arnold

Yeah. Well, before we get started into some of the nitty gritty with Zero Harm, could you tell us about your personal journey with safety and how that's led to your career in HSSE?

Paul Stephenson

Yeah, so I sort of fell into it by accident, if you pardon the pun.

John Arnold

It was a good pun!

Paul Stephenson

So I left university with a degree in psychology, and I kind of chose psychology because I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted my career to take. So I thought psychology's quite a broad brush. It covers a lot of different aspects. So that's why I chose it as a degree. And when I left university, I was still looking at what career path to go down, but I also needed the money. So I ended up getting a job with a company called the British Safety Council, and I was working in sales and business development for them. They're very, kind of, very widely recognized health and safety body in the UK. They do training, consultancy, audits, advice. They also lobby government. So they're involved in some of the regulatory changes that we see in the UK as well. And during the early part of my career with them, I sort of started to realize that HSSE and health and safety is all about people, looking after people, but also understanding what makes people tick and the decisions that people do, and perhaps not do, that can lead to trouble.

So I decided that HSSE was probably a career that I was going to pursue, and I was very lucky with the British Safety Council. They moved me into a learning development role and I was able to get some training and qualifications with them and build up my credentials. Then my first role in oil and gas and energy was with M.W. Kellogg, and they were actually 50% joint — jointly owned by KBR, JTC 50-50 joint venture. And in fact, many folk listening may have actually either worked for M.W. Kellogg or remember them. In fact, I think Nick Anagnostou [KBR vice president of HSSE] even worked for them at one point. But I worked as a behavioral safety advisor for them for a period of time, traveling the world and delivering what at the time was called our Shaping Accident-Free Environment. And that was a cultural program, sort of really driving leadership behaviors in terms of generating direction for HSSE across the business, looking right the way from senior leaders, right the way through to supervisors. So going out to different projects and delivering training was really fascinating part of my career.

And then I actually returned to the British Safety Council after that spell for a number of years and was seconded to work on the London 2012 Olympic Games, which was a great experience. So I was involved in developing some of the training courses that we were delivering to the volunteers that helped run the games. We called them Games Makers. So that was a great period as well. And then I moved to Worley [engineering company], and I was with Worley for about three or four years, predominantly working on the Future Growth Project, which was a mega project in Kazakhstan — about $40 billion — and I was based in the UK, but made regular trips out to the site in Kazakhstan to do audit and assurance activities of contractors in the field. Again, great experience, and really working with big clients like Chevron as well was great and fascinating. And then that kind of gets me to KBR. So 2017 — joined KBR and supporting various projects and proposals and looking after the Leatherhead campus. And then 2020 obviously we had the pandemic and that really threw health and safety into the forefront of everything that we do …

John Arnold

Absolutely.

Paul Stephenson

Operationally as well. Very, very busy time. Very obviously surreal and anxious time for many of us, but one which I think I'll look back on as a bit of a watershed moment in my career, because it was a real time to roll your sleeves up, get stuck in, and deal with a whole myriad of requirements and regulations that different countries had at the time in terms of what you could and couldn't do, as we all experienced. So kind of brings me up to where we are today.

John Arnold

It's so interesting talking with many people that I've interviewed for the podcast — talking about how their background in education sometimes doesn't necessarily inform what they've ended up doing. In some ways it may have. But for you, I wonder how that background in psychology has prepared you for a role in HSSE because as you mentioned, it's dealing with ... you're interacting with people.

Paul Stephenson

So I think it's really ... the psychology aspects have really helped me, from the cultural behavioral aspects, of really understanding the importance of reward and recognition. For example, the importance of reinforcing positive behavior, the importance of seeing people as a solution in safety and not necessarily the problem. I think it's very easy to get into a bit of a mindset where HSSE is the avoidance of the negative, which it is because we obviously want to avoid people being harmed. But when you're dealing with people, you have to recognize them for what they do well. And that's what's great about Zero Harm is that it fosters this idea that we look out for one another, and we recognize individuals and teams — and our team of teams — for doing the right thing and not trying to … As I say, it's not the absence of negative; it's the reinforcement of positive.

And from a psychological perspective, that's very important, because people tend to want to be rewarded for what they do. As human beings, we always want to find the shortcuts to reward, the easiest way to get the reward. So you want to make HSSE very easy for people. You don't want to put barriers in the way, unless they're physical barriers to protect them from harm. But those barriers can be detrimental because people find their way around them. So making everything right the way from our processes and procedures, through to our kind of Courage to Care Conversations, making it as easy for people to participate and be involved in those programs is very important to drive that culture forward.

John Arnold

That's fantastic. So I mean that segues beautifully into the next question: Zero Harm. So for our listeners who may be unfamiliar, can you tell us about what Zero Harm is?

Paul Stephenson

Yeah. Zero Harm is KBR's culture for how we look after people and the planet. If I start with the people aspect … so if you put Zero Harm on a page, we kind of see these two aspects coming together, which we call our Transactional Management tools if you like. And those are our Zero Harm Absolutes. So we have tools in the toolkit, if you like, that we call our Absolutes. These are things like TSTI, which is our pre-task risk assessment program. We've got our Courage to Care Conversations for intervening if we see things that don't look right, or equally if we want to have a conversation with someone about something that we've seen that does look right and give them some recognition for it. We've got our MyKey stop work authority, and Safety Energy, and our Key Behaviors, and how we understand and investigate incidents to make sure we prevent recurrence.

These are really important tools, and we call them our Absolutes because they are the non-negotiables in terms of how we conduct our work and execute our projects to make them successful. But the other aspect of Zero Harm is what we call our Transformational Leadership Behaviors. And all the nice tools that I've just described there don't really work unless you have the mindset to make them successful. So it's having that personal relationship with safety. It's treating it as something that we don't just pick it up on the way into work and wear it while we're at work and then discard it at the end of the day. It's something that we have with us at all times. And it's treating safety as a value rather than a shifting priority. So those are all the Transformational Leadership Behaviors. And we kind of see Zero Harm as those two aspects that come together. So many of the folks listening to this podcast may have seen our kind of zipper slide on our posters that kind of show that those two aspects come together to form our Zero Harm program or culture.

But a few years ago — in fact I think it was 2020 — we broadened out Zero Harm to include other sustainability topics. Zero Harm kind of covers the whole ESG agenda. So that's environment, social and governance. So although health, safety and security remains a kind of flagstone, or the flagship pillar, we have these other pillars that cover environmental aspects, such as Climate Change and [Efficient] Energy and Sustainable Travel. And those of you that have seen the Zero Harm logo, you'll see we've got on the left-hand side the environmental pillars, and then on the right-hand side the social and governance pillars. So Health, Safety and Security's in there. But we also have Community Engagement, Governance, in terms of risk management, and those other. So the whole ESG agenda is captured because sustainability is obviously such a huge part of the way we do our business now. So we broadened Zero Harm out in respect of that.

John Arnold

And it speaks to the efficacy of the Zero Harm HSSE platform that it was then broadened to include all of these other things because it now doesn't ... it's not only about Zero Harm to people, but it's about zero harm to processes, zero harm to communities, zero harm to one another. It's outstanding. So could you tell us about some of the progress that KBR has made since Zero Harm was implemented?

Paul Stephenson

Yeah. So I guess stuck in around 2014, just over 50% of the days we worked were without an incident. And we'd been kind of ticking along at that kind of performance level for a number of years. And that was pretty commendable safety performance back then given the high-risk nature of the work that we do, or did, certainly with big EPC [engineering, procurement and construction] jobs that we had at the time.

So to achieve around 50% of a year without an incident in terms of day's work was pretty commendable. Zero Harm was rolled out in 2015 and our recordable incident rate just dropped significantly. If you put it on a graph, you can see it goes off a cliff. It's fantastic. And we are now averaging around 90% days a year without an incident. That's nothing more ... when I say without an incident, that's nothing more serious than a first aid.

So we kind of track our Zero Harm days each year, and as I say, we're standing at around 90% Zero Harm days per year at the moment, and have been doing that since Zero Harm rolled out. And our performance, that kind of performance is the envy of our competitors. It kind of trends alongside some of the top-performing members of IAGP, which is the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. But we know that 90% is fantastic, but there's 10% to go. So we're constantly looking to ... we're on a journey to zero. We realize that we can't be complacent. It's about having that kind of sense of unease in everything that we do, and, “Where could the next incident happen?” “What can I do to prevent it?” Having that mindset at all times. And a key way of doing that is reinvigorating enthusiasm for Zero Harm each year with Zero Harm Day. That's a key part of doing that.

John Arnold

Absolutely. So if we get the timing just right, when folks hear this episode, they'll be celebrating — our people all around the world — will be celebrating Zero Harm Day. Can you tell us about what Zero Harm Day is, about this year's theme, and why it's important?

Paul Stephenson

Yeah, sure. So as with all previous years, the key theme for Zero Harm Day is about recognition and reflection. And as I said earlier, if we're not careful, then health and safety can very easily become the avoidance of danger or bad stuff that could go wrong. And you only hear about HSSE when something goes wrong, when you have an instant. And it's very easy for it to become the measurement of the absence of the negative. What Zero Harm Day is all about is recognizing our performance, recognizing the good stuff that we do, praising people for it, rewarding people for it, — individuals, teams, projects, departments, whatever it might be.

Because if you do that, then you encourage more of that behavior in the future, and it has a kind of rippling effect outwards. And it empowers people to take ownership. It fosters our interdependence culture, which is where we have people looking out for one another as well as themselves. And then the reflection element is all about looking back at the past, what have we learned, and really committing to another year of striving towards Zero Harm. And we do that by running all the fun events that we have going on and the activities that people can sign up for and take time out to participate in and enjoy, and really try and give people some new perspectives, education and tools to help us on our journey to zero. So it's that recognition and reflection which is the real key theme to Zero Harm Day.

John Arnold

We've had Zero Harm Days in the past — for example — where one of the sub-themes was Situational Awareness. This year's sub-theme is Plan, Organize, Direct, Control. Can you tell us about that and why that's important this year?

Paul Stephenson

Yeah, so this one is an interesting one because I think it's enabling us to think about planning and preparation and the importance of it. A common theme that runs through incidents when you investigate them — not just KBR’s, but in general — is you often find there's a lack of planning. There's a lack of foresight. And people kind of wish they'd taken the time before conducting a task to step back and think about what could go wrong rather than just getting stuck in. How often have we spotted something at home that bothers us and we think, "Oh, it's a quick fix. We'll just pull up a chair to change a light bulb or reach across that little bit further on a ladder to paint that bit of wall rather than get coming down the ladder and shifting the ladder across?" all that sort of stuff, and it's the same at work.

So as I said earlier, as human beings, we are always kind of on the lookout for the quickest route of reward, and sometimes that comes at a price. But what Plan, Organize, Direct, Control enables us to do is to think about the importance of planning, thinking ahead to identifying risks, making sure that everyone involved in a task understands what needs to be done to manage those risks. And then we make sure that we have the right organization in place to do the task, which can be training and competency, and then we direct the task in accordance to the plan. So we use the plan, we use that to execute a task. And then to control that task. We then use things like our Courage to Care Conversations or our stop work authority to step in if things don't quite go ... or go off task.

And so it's really … Plan, Organize, Direct, Control is very closely akin to our Total Safety Task Instruction, our TSTI process, which is our kind of JHA [job hazard analysis] that really makes sure that people understand these hazards before ... break a task down, look at what's required, and then execute the task according to that plan. And this covers not just HSSE, but kind of risk management in general. So the theme of our Zero Harm Awards in Leatherhead this year has been around Risk Champions. So it covers our health, safety and security pillar, but it also covers our Risk Management pillar. And we're … we are asking for people to nominate Risk Champions — people that might be looking at planning, organizing, and directing and controlling risk in finance or operations …

John Arnold

Oh outstanding.

Paul Stephenson

Yeah — other aspects of the business, not just necessarily HSSE. But yeah, an old boss of mine years ago, he always used to say, "It's always better to ask what if than if only," which I think is what this is all about. Let's take the time to do things properly before we get stuck in, because our nature as human beings is to, as I say, take the shortcut sometimes.

John Arnold

As someone who's been injured many times for not planning, organizing, directing, and controlling, I can say that that is sound advice. So back to Zero Harm Day. What are some examples — every year we see the pictures on social media just popping out everywhere — what are some of the examples of the types of celebrations or activities that people have planned in our different locations worldwide?

Paul Stephenson

Here in Leatherhead, I can give you that example. We've just had our final Zero Harm Day planning meeting, and we're good to go, hopefully, for the day itself, which at the time that everyone's listening will be in full flow hopefully. But we're having an acting company come in to run a small theatrical performance that shows a scenario that has a potential to go wrong, and then you have audience participation to help direct the actors to a safe outcome and see how that all plays out. We've got escape room competitions. In fact, escape rooms are happening all over the world. I think Houston's doing one. There's some escape room competitions happening in the Middle East. We're having a session of that here in Leatherhead, so seems to be on trend, escape rooms.

John Arnold

Definitely.

Paul Stephenson

So that's going on. Houston are having a lot of, and Leatherhead as well, we're having sessions with our ERG — ERG, employee resource groups — giving them the opportunity to show what they do with regards to supporting our team of teams across KBR and the important roles that they play. What else is happening? Lots of competitions, lots of celebrations, taking time out to recognize people. I think more or less every location's going to be doing some sort of awards presentation with senior leadership getting involved. Banner signing is the traditional way that we kick off the day, so everyone signs up to another year of Zero Harm.

John Arnold

Right.

Paul Stephenson

Signs the banner and the banner goes up on the water as a reminder of the day. Lots of freebies and gifts and merchandise to give out as well. So yeah, there's loads happening, and kudos to the individuals that help pull the day together and make it such a success.

John Arnold

Yeah, no, we have people on the [KBR] Global Marketing team who've been fast and furious with designs of different swag and banners and things like that that are going to be up in the next few days. So it is a team-of-teams effort around the world to get all of these different celebrations up. Just indicative of KBR culture. Well, Paul, before I let you go, is there anything else you'd like to add?

Paul Stephenson

No. It's been a pleasure, John. Thanks for the opportunity and thanks for helping get Zero Harm out there on the map, and hopefully everyone's having a great Zero Harm Day as they're listening to this.

John Arnold

Absolutely. Happy Zero Harm Day everyone, and thanks again, Paul.

Paul Stephenson

Take care. Thank you.

CONCLUSION

John Arnold

It was so great speaking with Paul Stephenson. We want to thank him again for joining us and talking to us about KBR's Zero Harm culture.

We also want to send warm wishes for a happy Zero Harm Day to KBR people near and far and all around the world. Can't wait to see all the pics from the celebrations.

And as always, thank you, Emma for the amazing work you do. Emma's our producer. We couldn't do it without her.

If you'd like to learn more about KBR Zero Harm culture and our safety and sustainability commitments and progress, you can head over to kbr.com and look under the “Who We Are” tab — lots of good information there, including recent safety milestones and our annual Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report.

If you have any questions for us, have an idea for an episode, or just want to say hi, let us hear from you by emailing inorbit@kbr.com. And that's it for this episode, friends. We hope you tune in a couple of weeks when we should have crossed that 10,000 downloads mark. Very exciting, and we could not do it without you. Lots more good stories to come. In the meantime, take care of yourselves out there and thanks again for being with us.