Article - Soft controls compliance culture workshop
[ Source: National Congress Brzo-Seveso, November 22, 2022, Utrecht]
Summary
On November 22, the annual National Brzo-Seveso Congress was held in Utrecht. This congress brings together all parties in the chain to catch up on the latest developments in the field of Brzo: governments, inspection services, Brzo companies, research and engineering firms and other stakeholders. During this 8th edition, the focus was on working together for safety.
Jaap Wijnker (STANTEC) and Arjan van Dijk (Safety Delta Nederland) provided one of the workshops. Based on the following propositions, the culture of the supervisory relationship was discussed:
- You improve safety by professionalizing internal supervision. You want to go from a snapshot (photo - audit) to permanently demonstrating that the measures are working to control environmental risks ( film - monitoring process indicators).
- The dot on the horizon for External Supervision is: rule-free, but not lawless! Compliance with the law is paramount. Internal and external supervision are tools for assessing the effectiveness with which environmental risks are mitigated. Learning from mistakes is given a higher priority than punishing mistakes.
- What is needed: professionalize internal supervision in companies, set high standards of accountability and strengthen capacity in external supervisors.
- This also requires a culture change: from using power to working from trust and being held accountable for results. This involves a supervisory relationship with a greater role for internal supervision by the company and the last word for external supervision by the government.
The workshop addressed soft controls around compliance culture based on work by Muel Kaptein ("Why Good People Sometimes Do Bad Things").
