SAFETY CULTURE IN ONGC: AN INTRODUCTORY STUDY

Abstract

The culture of safety is very crucial in accident prevention and increasing operational reliability in high risk industry like oil and gas industry. This paper presents a background evaluation of the safety culture in the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) based on its critical aspects such as commitment to management, safety communication, training and competence, incident reporting and learning, employee participation, and contractor safety assimilation. The study will be based on a mixed-methods approach using survey data and supplementing qualitative data to analyze the perceptions of the safety culture at employees and contract workers in the selection ONGC installations. The results show that ONGC possesses an excellent formal safety system with the observable leadership dedication, established operational procedures, and formal training programs. Nevertheless, the integration of contractors, open communication, and incident-based organizational learning is found to have weak points and therefore result in differences in safety culture based on hierarchical and employment levels. This paper finds that ONGC has proven to have a compliancebased and calculative safety culture but still more needs to be done to instill proactive and generative operational level safety behaviors. The article provides useful guidance on how to reinforce the culture of safety in major publicly-owned oil and gas companies.