Creating Common and Consistent Standards as Critical Enablers of Growth
Context and Challenge
A leading petrochemical company established an aggressive vision for growth
Historically, different sites had established their own local standards, with significant site-to-site variation, even under the umbrella of Responsible Care®, with active resistance to standardization
Leadership recognized that standardization was critical to enable future growth, especially and that there were real near term implications for the lack of standardization, including:
Inconsistent senior leadership interaction across sites
Lack of integration of acquisitions
No sharing of best practices
Not moving people across sites
Not driving improvements and reducing risk
Not supporting a learning organization
Lack of cost management (writing, revising, training) associated with multiple regional procedures
Approach
Enrolled workforce in vision for growth and engaged people in understanding the need for standardization to enable that growth
Focused on Responsible Care® as the initial focus for standardization due to strong buy-in to that program across all sites
Worked with an RC team to understand the aspects of the standard/procedure current state including the management system, documentation processes, roles and responsibilities, training, and evaluation of risk. In addition, external bench marking was conducted and provided valuable insight
Developed a process for standardization with specific focus on company-wide instead of regional procedures, accountabilities and required behaviors for success. In addition, the process had to be fit for purpose, easy to understand and utilize, involve all levels of employees and produce sustainable results
Achieved recognition that senior leadership engagement was critical to reinforce and role model consistently across sites
While revising all current processes will take 3-5 years, initial benefits will be seen in improved leadership behaviors and RC performance, reduction of cost and increased employee ownership
“Evolve’s support has been invaluable. I had worked with consultants before, and I guess had the view that consultants were useful so long as you kept them ‘in their box.’ Working with Evolve has changed my views.”