Episode 11 - "All accidents can be related to a lack of three things"

“All accidents can be related to a lack of leadership, a lack ofcommunication, and a lack of mental focus.”

In this episode Bjørn is guested by Roger New, EHS & Facilities Manager and newly facilitated HSE Mental Focus Specialist. You can hear him elaborate on the above statement or listen to other great insights in this new episode of “The Human Factor in HSE”. Once again, thank you so much for sharing your great story and insightful approaches, Roger!

Roger has a long and impressive career and according to his experience, focusing on the task at hand is crucial. However, it’s not only important to be aware of the importance of mental focus: the important thing is to actually do something about the problems we face. To put it as simply as Roger does: “whether you're a police officer, whether you're a manufacturing production worker - if your mind is not in the game if your mind is not on what you're doing, you’re adding to your own risk.”

Through his work and his approach to HSE, Roger demonstrates an impressive ability to stay curious and to stay close to the operation itself even when advancing to the top of the organisation. I am sure that we could all learn from this attitude! He has experienced troubles along the way with both managers and the constant problem with management buy-in when he wanted to implement more safety training and attention to mental focus training but has luckily been persistent enough to get his suggestions through. This approach has granted him the great pleasure of seeing the incident numbers go down. He believes that we in the future need to make the top of organisations more aware of what a good safety system is or what a safety person should be looking at and in general, learn more from our current mistakes.

Listen to this podcast to gain more fantastic insights from Roger New's great HSE career!