Taking the Next Step

Taking the Next Step
Building a resilient safety culture

We’re working to build a resilient safety culture by going beyond the “what” when it comes to incidents and near-misses, and taking a deeper look at the “why”. Hear from Jodi, Vanessa, and Adam about how we're empowering Team EPCOR to safeguard each other.

At EPCOR, getting home safely at the end of each shift and protecting the public and environment are shared responsibilities and integral to the company’s mission to be socially responsible.

For Jodi Nypuik, EPCOR’s director of Health, Safety, Security and Environment, achieving that mission means building a culture where safety is a way of life.

“We want our team members to feel empowered to point out hazards or mistakes, even if they made them,” he says. "In this kind of resilient safety culture, we embrace that some errors are normal.”

When he joined EPCOR in 2019, Nypuik arrived with almost three decades leading health, safety and emergency response teams on three continents. He wanted to introduce a new method of investigating safety incidents to support and advance EPCOR’s safety culture for the better.

It’s called “causal analysis,” and it’s about going beyond the “what” of an incident or serious near miss (known as a Significant Injury or Fatality Potential incident, or SIFP) and looking at the “why.” “What are the organizational systems and behaviours that led to the incident?” Nypuik says. “And how can we improve future performance to prevent recurrence?”

“We want our team members to feel empowered to point out hazards or mistakes, even if they made them. In this kind of resilient safety culture, we embrace that some errors are normal.”

Mapping out the "why" of incidents

The process of implementing the causal analysis approach started with selecting a dozen health, safety and technical experts across EPCOR’s electrical operations in Edmonton to take a week-long training in causal analysis, with Vanessa Johnston, now a health and safety manager, leading the group to understand and implement the causal analysis approach.

Trainees worked in teams, using the new method to investigate safety incidents across Edmonton’s electrical operations. “The biggest shift with causal analysis is mindset,” Johnston says. “By using traditional investigative methods that often rely on software programs, you can identify causes fairly quickly. But those causes are usually negative in nature — human error or inattention, procedure not followed, things like that. It’s about what didn’t happen, not what did happen.”

With causal, as it’s informally known, investigators conduct interviews and gather evidence to map out the complex web of decisions and external factors at play for any incident.

“Why did the worker choose that specific tool, or what was going on in their workday that caused them to miss a step?” Johnston says. “With causal, we can answer those questions, and make the organizational changes to ensure the incident or near miss doesn’t happen again.”

Creating psychological safety

For Electricity Services Trouble Operations Trainer Adam Mitchell, causal goes beyond improving tools and processes. It's actually about safeguarding the psychological wellness of frontline team members, who might worry about being held 100% responsible when something goes wrong.

“If you're involved in an incident, beating yourself up or being afraid of being blamed can take a mental toll,” says Mitchell, who helps train the team that restores power outages in Edmonton, as well as acts as a fill-in member.

Mitchell says restoring outages requires any number of electrical skills that must be deployed both safely and without delay.

“Quick decisions have to be made,” Mitchell says. “Speed must always be balanced with safety, and our teams make those calculations every day.”

Mitchell was invited to join Johnston’s team in 2020 and has taken part as an expert advisor in three investigations. The experience has shown him that EPCOR is committed to taking even more responsibility as a company for its role in safety training and analysis.

“There’s usually more to an incident than somebody just made a mistake,” Mitchell says. “What about the factors outside their control? Did they get the right training, for instance.”

Leadership with a Social Purpose

EPCOR demonstrates a shared purpose in delivering reliable services, fostering diversity and inclusion, and caring for communities and each other. Discover more about our work as a socially responsible corporation that lives its purpose: Communities count on us. We count on each other.

Our commitments

Rolling out casual analysis

EPCOR’s safety record has been consistently improving. In 2022, the company’s total recordable injury frequency — a measure used across Canada and the U.S. of the number of injuries per 200,000 hours worked — fell below 1.00 for the first time.

Nypuik hopes that the new investigative method will help EPCOR do even better as it focuses on a safety-first culture, driving to zero incidents. In the years to come, causal analysis is expected to be rolled out across EPCOR’s operations in water, electricity and natural gas across Canada and the U.S.

“Systemic change is not about introducing policies and procedures alone,” he says. “Causal analysis allows team members to be part of the change we need to build a resilient safety culture.”

EPCOR’s safety record has been consistently improving. In 2022, the company’s total recordable injury frequency — a measure used across Canada and the U.S. of the number of injuries per 200,000 hours worked — fell below 1.00 for the first time.

Nypuik hopes that the new investigative method will help EPCOR do even better as it focuses on a safety-first culture, driving to zero incidents. In the years to come, causal analysis is expected to be rolled out across EPCOR’s operations in water, electricity and natural gas across Canada and the U.S.

“Systemic change is not about introducing policies and procedures alone,” he says. “Causal analysis allows team members to be part of the change we need to build a resilient safety culture.”

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Causal analysis was first used by Electricity employees and is expected to be rolled out across EPCOR operations.

Taking the Next Step