Dear Sir
I read your site always with great interest and believe you should post this letter to all Shell staff.
As a Shell employee I believe this is a concerted effort, coordinated by the spindoctors and lawyers of Shell, to get off the hook when it comes to a courtcase. Jeroen is far too bright not to understand what is really happening. But he prefers to listen to his lawyers rather than be a tough director and remove some managers who have lied to him and/or underperformed.
Remarkable it needs to be reminded that safety is #1 after all the stories in the press and your site. We already knew that for the last 25 years or more. Or does he think the current generation of ‘leaders’ have different ideas?
Your site is genuinely open and transparant, you publish the good and the bad stuff for all to read.
Please keep your site going,
Sincerely Yours
—–Original Message—–
From: J.VanderVeer@shell.com [mailto:J.VanderVeer@shell.com]
Sent: 19 July 2006 16:38
Subject: Message to all staff from Jeroen van der Veer
From: Â Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive
To: Â All Shell employees
Date: Â 17 July 2006
Subject:Â Safety is Job No.1
http://sww05.europe.shell.com/group/gce_message/Mar05_01/jvdv.gifÂ
This letter has been translated into twelve other languages.
Please click here http://sww.shell.com//home/news/2376/current.aspx for a
translation.
Dear Colleagues,
This is my first monthly letter. As I told our senior leaders during Shell
Business Week, I intend to write to you over the coming year - beyond my
usual messages. I will share my views on key topics with everyone across
Shell. In doing so, I hope we get more alignment around our top priorities
as a company. I encourage you all to discuss the points I raise so that we
can deliver on Shell’s strategy “More Upstream, Profitable Downstream”,
driven by a first quartile mentality.
So I hope you will openly share your views with others around you. I invite
your direct feedback. I will read it, and learn from your input (please keep
it simple, short and straight). You can be sure that I will try to better
understand how the people of Shell see our challenges, our strength and
opportunities. That is my receiving end of the conversation - your words to
me.
The first key topic is safety. Why safety, you may ask. Are we not focusing
on Delivery and Growth, Operational Excellence and a First Quartile
Mentality? True, but frankly - without a further improved safety
performance, little else matters.
There are good reasons for focusing on safety that go beyond the recent week
everyone in Downstream devoted to the topic. Safety is a right and an
obligation. Safety embodies our values - honesty, integrity and respect for
people. And achieving better safety performance is Enterprise First in
action. Without a strong safety culture, all other aspects of our culture
will erode. To me, safety is one main driver and indicator of higher
performance.
Let’s be perfectly clear. Our safety performance has reached a plateau - and
remains below best-in-class in our industry. Our statistics show it. We know
it. What does this mean? Are we not trying hard enough, focusing hard
enough, or haven’t we accepted that we have a problem? I think it is a
mixture. All these aspects are probably part and parcel of the safety
problem. The solution rests on willpower, behaviour and taking action.
In Shell, safety awareness rightly should be “first” nature, since we have
been involved in hazardous, complex and challenging activities for more than
a hundred years. Many of our people are technical experts, and know how to
control the hazards of operating a platform, a refinery, a chemical plant,
or a fuel depot and fuel transport. And yet, despite the experience and
expertise, things can go wrong. And when things go wrong people can be hurt,
or, even worse, lose their lives, which is very distressing for everyone.
And the world around us sees us as not safe enough.
In the past weeks, there have been media reports focusing on our safety
performance in the North Sea, especially the Brent field. Part of the
background is a debate around whether we, as a company, acted in sufficient
depth and breadth on recommendations made in our own 1999 review of platform
safety management. We genuinely believe we did. Nonetheless, there were two
tragic deaths on the Brent Bravo in September 2003.
Although a one-billion-dollar improvement programme is underway in our North
Sea operations, the debate in the media is likely to continue about whether
we have done enough to ensure the technical integrity, safety standards and
safety behaviour in that area of operations.
What can we learn from this? We see that it is hard to argue with
perceptions, whether in the North Sea or elsewhere. It will take years to
shift the view of those who are critical. It helps if we have consistent
improvement in performance.
We owe this to ourselves and to all who are touched by our activities. My
colleagues on the Executive Committee and I believe that good safety
performance is one basis of the “contract” we have with ourselves, our
families and friends, and with our neighbours.
So, I ask you to ask yourself - are you aware of what more you can do, and
when you can and must intervene? And are you clear on how to do this before
something goes wrong in operations around you? Have you been learning from
past mistakes?
Recently someone asked me if anything keeps me awake at night - and in that
case, what would this be? I’m fortunate in that I am able to rest when given
an opportunity, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about how we can make
our Golden Rules come alive.
I’m sure you are familiar with them. But let me remind you. The Golden Rules
are:
You and I:
   * Comply with the law, policies and procedures
   * Intervene on unsafe or non-compliant situations
   * Respect our neighbours
These three simple rules are powerful. It is our commitment to build a
company we can be proud of. So for me, it is about how we want to be. You
and I have the expertise. We only need the will to act according to our
ambition. Let’s get off this plateau together and improve our performance by
making safety “job number 1″.
If you would like to send me your feedback, please click
http://sww.shell.com/home/feedback/en/921/frontFeedbackpage.aspx
Best regards,
http://sww01.europe.shell.com/visualmediaservices/projects/jvd-sig.gif
Jeroen van der Veer
Group Chief Executive
ShellNews.net comment: Mr van der Veer is a Defendant in a global class action lawsuit alleging fraud in respect of the oil reserves scandal. Shell has already settled for a multimillion dollar sum another lawsuit brought on similar grounds against Shell and named directors, including him and Malcolm Brinded. Mr van der Veer has already made admissions in regards to the scandal. So much for the BS about honesty and integrity.
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