Energy On The Offensive™ #003 - How Safety Language Will Be Used Against You

With HSE requirements being so important in the energy industry, many companies feel the need to have an entire page on their website devoted to how “safety is the top priority” and go into detail on their safety and training commitments.

The word safety should not be on your website.

Idealistic statements on a website with details on your safety and training commitments are a plaintiff attorney’s dream. They will make you answer to it during deposition. Their reptile strategy is built for it. From the start, they will attempt to get under the skin of a corporate officer during deposition. The goal is to lead them down the path of admitting a lack of corporate responsibility.

We all know in the energy business, accidents happen, so companies must always be thinking about and preparing for litigation. Therefore, there is no sense in raising the legal bar on yourself from words put on a website. This does not mean sacrificing safety. You should always be developing a safety-focused culture, have written policies, and have frequent documented safety training. But those written materials should be to the point without extra “feel good” language.

If you don’t have a website, you still need to make sure your employee handbook / HSE policy does not have idealistic language or puts requirements on your company that you cannot keep 100% of the time.

Please share this email and encourage others to subscribe. Industry-wide, any win we give up easily to the plaintiff’s bar just adds millions of dollars to their pockets and fuels the problem.