Visions - Spring 2020 - 10

CONTINUED

HSE
VISIONS: Putting the COVID-19 pandemic aside for a minute,
what has been going on in the past one or two years that has
advanced our level of HSE and made us better than before?
Tom Gloyd: The largest advancement I
would say is our HSE awareness level.
People are becoming more aware of the
importance of HSE in the organization.
I think we are getting better at communicating and sharing HSE information
and guidance. You know, we have
been marketing HSE for a while, at
the CFC conference and at managers
meetings. We are trying to do more
communication on why having a strong HSE program is important
for sustainability and growth within the oranization. So when you
look at Fortune 500 companies that are very successful, they
always have a mature and evolving safety culture. They have well
established HSE programs and policies in place, and this is our
direction. In addition, we must be continually improving to keep
pace with the times and the market demands. I think the future
of HSE in SC Americas is that all of the divisions would have
centralized but division-specific HSE programs.
VISIONS: Tonya how would you say things have been going the
last couple of years, and what are some of the successes?
Tonya Zepeda: So when I first started, I actually did a survey
of the office and of the knowledge of employees, just general
HSE, with questions like, do you feel that we have that in our
organization? Have you heard about it? Are you familiar with the
procedures we have in place? We did this because when I started,
there was kind of a global management system of documentation
and standards that they had created and put out, and the survey
results were quite negative. Employees were not aware that we had
an HSE management system, that we had these procedures and
programs. So that was my first challenge when I spent my first year
just doing training, mentoring and guidance on what programs we
have in place, which are, just safety programs that we implement
within the office in our projects and our subsidiaries.
VISIONS: Who were the people that you were teaching?
Tonya Zepeda: I started with the leadership team. Because you
know, and Tom will also tell you this, safety has to come from
the top down, and if management does not have the buy in and
the support, it is very difficult to be engaged with the employees
because their management is not prioritizing it. As a result, we
did a lot of leadership team coaching, guiding. From there, the
training has been cascaded down to employees. Then we built an
HSE committee made up of employees from various levels and
departments to engage in HSE, provide feedback, and champion
HSE culture within their groups.
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Spring 2020

VISIONS: How do you apply that to the programs you write?
Tonya Zepeda: Essentially, we
have created a comprehensive
program with a lot of moving
parts. To implement the programs,
it
requires training, observation, and
monitoring. We apply standards
across the projects by monitoring
the activities for compliance through
progress reviews and site visits. Each
procedure has target activities and goals so it is easy to track
progress. The next step is to go beyond compliance and start
talking about general HSE culture. That is where you build the
culture of a society - that society being a company of people
- so they are thinking about HSE all the time, not just flipping
on a switch in their head when they come to work and do the
work safely and then go home and turn it off. The HSE Committee implements safety moments, topics and posters to build a
safety culture that can apply beyond the workplace. We will cover
driving, lawn care, vacation safety, home safety and various other
topics that could apply to anyone. While we are developing that,
as Tom said, we still have an obligation for continuous improvement, so we have to refresh our programs. We frequently revisit
what we have put in place and say, is it still working and does it
need to change? Does it need to have different nuances based
on the work we are doing, based on the way business changes?
We come from a company of people that said, "I do not know
anything about HSE," but then in last year's survey, 98 percent of
people said they are very familiar with HSE. They know what to do
when there is an incident. They know who to communicate with
and they know what our program is. We were very excited to see
that growth.

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VISIONS: Tom, your goal for Sumitomo Corporation of Americas
is placing our businesses and organizations several levels above
compliant, which can be daunting, considering the wide array of
diversification among our businesses in the Americas. How are
you getting closer to your goal?
Tom Gloyd: The first step is to assess what we have as far
as HSE policies and procedures. Where are we? That process,
though, is not easy because our overall asset mix keeps changing. I would say that talking with the GMs regularly, and trying to
connect with as many group companies as I can gives me better
traction in this area.
I have actually experienced success in places where, frankly, they
said they didn't want me or they didn't need me. I managed to
get in the door, and then they found out that, hey, he is not here
to hurt us. He is here to help. Unfortunately, I think that the idea
of corporate showing up at the doorstep could sometimes have

Visions - Spring 2020

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