Embedding a Just Culture in Stenersen

Since 2012 Green-Jakobsen has worked together with Stenersen, which is a family-owned tanker company that has existed since 1974 and that has operated a fleet exclusively consisting of chemical and product tankers since 2002. Since the beginning more than 40 years ago, the company has grown considerably when it comes to the number of vessels in operation, number of employees and the management services being provided.

It all started with leadership training, as Stenersen wanted to improve the leadership skills of both office staff and officers on board so, Green-Jakobsen delivered the first leadership courses in 2012. They wanted to strengthen their leaders to become vital players in achieving the company business goals and live the values to become a ‘Reliable Partner’ which is still Stenersen’s mission.

But Stenersen’s ambitions did not stop there and in the period of our collaboration, we have helped them develop and strengthen their business strategy, elaborate a Stenersen company code, delivered safety and leadership courses, workshops, seminars, and since 2019 Safety Delta is onboard all their vessels.

Stenersen acknowledges that improving (safety) performance means that all initiatives from strategy development and embedment, safety evaluation and training, and leadership development must go hand in hand and must constantly be kept alive. Therefore, they wanted to build a project on top of all other initiatives to ensure that learnings, tools and systems are interconnected and keep playing a vital part in the execution of the everyday tasks to maintain a very high safety culture.

Over the years Stenersen has managed to create a very good in-house company safety culture, and there is no doubt by the Stenersen management that this is due to the many good initiatives we have launched together since 2012.

To tie everything together even more, a Safety-I’s campaign has been launched ashore and on board, and this was followed up by a Just Culture face-to-face course for the shore-based staff. Next step is to launch the Just culture course as an online course to all officers and pumpmen in the company. Finally, a 1-day Just Culture session for 80 officers was held in October 2022.

In a just culture people are accountable for their actions and the organisation has a learning culture. The philosophy is to connect the Safety-I’s and all taught leadership theories, tools, and mindsets because together they strongly support the Just Culture principles. The way the conference participants were able to display their understanding of “stepping up”, “being accountable” and use the Safety I’s proves that Stenersen is certainly heading in the right direction.

The Just Culture Response app developed specifically for Stenersen by Green-Jakobsen is available for all crew members for quick and easy reference to the tools supporting the just culture. The app was also in use during the conference.

One of the ideas is to help the leaders constantly review behaviour among the crew members and be able to respond whether it be to excellent or poor behaviour. To be able to do that, the leaders must know how to observe behaviour and the criteria to take into consideration when responding to the observed good or bad behaviours. For this purpose, they have the Quick Response Map to help them.

From top management to crew members, all seem to have understood the mission of these initiatives and the organization has been capable of maintaining persistency. Throughout the ten years since the first initiatives were taken, starting with the leadership training, they have had a constant focus on improvement through involvement and engagement.