The oil and gas industry appears to be doing a good job of managing ill health, although fatigue management may need some work. This is according to the recently released Health Performance Indicators report from the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) and Ipieca, the global oil and gas industry organization for environmental and social issues.
The organizations have been collecting data on industry health performance and releasing annual reports since 2008. In 2023, the report was revised to simplify the scoring system and introduce a more granular list of scores to allow better reflection of improvement efforts.
Updates to the technical content of the health performance indicators (HPI) have been made to:
- Reflect the increasing recognition of the importance of mental health in the workplace
- Respond to rising numbers of emerging infectious illnesses
- Continue to help improve future health performance through preventive actions
- Include fatigue and well-being
- Separate fitness for task and health surveillance into two elements
The current report presents data reported by 30 IOGP member companies for 2022 for the revised HPI statements. The process maturity score assesses the extent to which a process exists within the organization. This means determining if there is a process in place and if it has been fully developed, rolled out, embedded, and subject to audit, assurance, and continual improvement activities.
A second score assesses the coverage of the process across the organization. In addition, a percentage scoring system allows companies to assess qualitatively what percentage of their sites/business/personnel are at the assessed level of maturity and then convert that percentage to a numeric score.
When the two scores are taken together, they provide a good indication of performance as a whole because differences between the way companies have interpreted and used the tools are likely to even out.
Process maturity results for 2022 show that:
- Management of ill health scored the highest.
- Fatigue scored the lowest, reflecting the need for ongoing action.
- Health impact assessment has consistently scored lowest between 2013 and 2021 but has been showing a long-term increase year on year.
- Management of ill health at work and medical emergency management have been the two highest scoring elements over the past 10 years.
- Health reporting and record management, critical to the provision of robust data, has been in the Top 3 since 2013.