We are excited to bring you our first leadership and safety podcast – Driving sustainable safety performance: Conversations with Xavier Bontemps, International HSE Leader – available now to stream below.
Hosted by Kate Chauviré, Director, Academic Planning and Coordination at CEDEP, this illuminating and important podcast explores how leaders can drive sustainable safety performance to help protect lives, assets and the environment. With over 35 years’ energy industry leadership experience, Xavier shares his insightful real-life experiences, safety challenges and best-practice solutions.
What does it take for an organisation to believe in zero accidents? How do you sense if your organisation is going blind on safety? How do you know if your HSE professionals are performing well? How do you tackle HSE in a world bracing for renewables and the environmental and environmental societal governance of companies? What are the common performance levers between safety leadership and operational excellence?
Episode #01: What does it take for an organisation to believe in zero accidents?
To start the series, Xavier Bontemps discusses how safety has been such a common thread throughout his career, shares how he started his zero journey and outlines the crucial steps involved to achieve a zero cultural mindset based on real life – and sometimes tragic – personal experiences.
Listen here!
Episode #02: How do you sense if your organisation is going blind on safety?
In this new episode, Xavier Bontemps discusses how organisations can get comfortable with risks, shortcuts become acceptable and complacency settles in as companies grow. He illustrates how organisations can go blind on safety with three lived experiences of tragic disasters in the oil and gas sector and offers practical ways of preventing safety blindness.
Episode #03: How do you know if your HSE professionals are performing well?
In this engaging new episode, Xavier explores how safety leadership helps companies navigate through re-organisations, catastrophes, pandemics, major investments, mergers and acquisitions and so on. But sustainable safety performance can only be obtained when management establishes a strong safety culture. Listen to find out which key competencies HSE professionals need to demonstrate early on in their careers and how safety leadership training programmes are an essential element in developing a coherent community of strong safety practices.
Episode #04: How do you tackle HSE in a world bracing for renewables and the environmental and societal governance of companies?
In this episode, Xavier draws on his own personal experiences to raise a number of safety challenges that lie ahead for the new and ever-evolving renewable energy industry. These include workplace safety, process safety and environmental and societal acceptability. He then outlines some of the possible solutions and observes that the traditional approach to safety leadership still applies to renewables.
Episode #05: What are the common performance levers between safety leadership and operational excellence?
In this final episode, Xavier connects safety and operational excellence and examines the common performance levers between the two. He discusses how safety leadership and operational excellence work naturally together based on his personal experiences during his 35-year energy industry career.
About Xavier Bontemps
Xavier Bontemps is an international HSE leader and safety professional with over 35 years’ energy industry leadership experience gained from senior roles at BP, Ineos and Total – and most recently as TotalEnergies’ Corporate HSE Director for over three years.
Xavier Bontemps is an international HSE leader and safety professional with over 35 years’ energy industry leadership experience gained from senior roles at BP, Ineos and Total – and most recently as TotalEnergies’ Corporate HSE Director for over three years.
CEDEP and safety
For over a decade, CEDEP has worked with its members to develop and strengthen the leadership elements required for a strong and sustainable safety culture. As organisations struggle to compete in a more complex and fast-paced world, forward-thinking leaders agree that the greatest impact on overall performance is achieved by caring for their people.
The leadership themes discussed in this podcast are explored in detail during CEDEP’s flagship Leadership & Safety Culture programme (L&SC) Level 1 and 2 , co-created by L’Oréal and Sanofi, and in CEDEP’s Safety Leadership Academy programme jointly created with SPE for the Oil & Gas industry and endorsed by the IOGP.
These inspiring learning journeys are designed to help participants rise to the many challenges involved in creating a healthier, more engaged and effective workforce, and examine how our pandemic world has changed workplace health and safety expectations and needs.
Our programmes enable H&S leaders from all industries and sectors to rethink their roles and develop the skills and tools necessary to embrace our new world. Our Safety Leadership Academy is specifically focused on developing leadership capabilities within the oil and gas industry to shift paradigms and make zero accidents a reality.
Find out more about these programmes below or contact Muriel Pailleux, Sales & Marketing Director at muriel.pailleux@cedep.fr
Leadership & Safety Culture Level 1
