Improving Process Safety and Organizational Culture

To level up employee safety, Alcoa’ Global Health and Safety team recently adapted a best-in-class Process Safety Management (PSM) standard to create a tailored approach for our operations. A diverse panel of experts from other industries was enlisted to bolster this initiative.

Alcoa’s new PSM standard is based on guidelines that were originally developed for the oil and gas sector. The Alcoa team also leveraged other Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards to develop a tailored approach that is suited to our unique operational needs. The resulting standard is comprised of six core elements:

• Assurance
• Risk management
• Operational documents
• Training
• Change management
• Incident investigation

These elements help our teams identify process safety critical systems, delineate process safety critical controls and assess the effectiveness of managing these critical controls. Altogether, this approach allows us to proactively mitigate the risks associated with high consequence, low probability events, thereby enhancing overall operational safety.

In tandem with the PSM standard, our Global Health and Safety team set out to improve our auditing process. While Alcoa already conducts risk-based audits based on internal standards and compliance measures, the team recognized the need to address broader aspects of safety culture and leadership.

In addition to evaluating controls in the field, Alcoa is now working to incorporate assessments of leadership, culture and employee engagement levels into our audits. This holistic approach aims to assign maturity and cultural scores, providing insights into the effectiveness of procedures and controls, which are intricately linked to organizational culture and leadership.

By addressing safety culture evaluation within internal audits and adopting the new PSM standard, Alcoa strives to improve overall safety performance and further reduce the risk of incidents and injuries.