'The real challenge is going beyond compliance and making HSE as DNA of an organisation'

Dr Amit Patil, HSE Leader - ISC Zone, Philips India is into the field of health safety environment and business continuity for more than 25 years and has worked in India and middle East. Currently he is responsible in Philips India limited as health safety environment leader along with responsibility of deployment of business continuity for India subcontinent zone.

Please tell us about your professional journey and your role in the current organization.

I am into field of health safety environment and business continuity for more than 25 years and I have worked in India and middle East. During this tenure I have visited more than 24 countries and have conducted audits, trainings and other activities. This give me variety of understanding of different cultures including the health safety and environment and understanding and it's deployment process.

With a PHD in safety psychology focusing on behaviour best safety the journey was more interesting because instead of just looking at HSE from a technical view I also try to explore the human part of it which is ultimately very important for building a very mature culture.

Currently I am responsible in Philips India limited as health safety environment leader along with responsibility of deployment of business continuity for India subcontinent zone.

What are the key HSE challenges you face and how do you plan to alleviate them?

I believe industry is undergoing a major change right now from health safety and environment perspective because there is awareness on this topic as the legal compliances are also increasing day by day, but the real challenge is going beyond compliance and making HSE as DNA of an organisation.

Also with multiple professionals entering this field I feel there is a gap in their professional knowledge and maturity to lead this function and its deployment, maybe because of variety of courses which are available but all of them are not providing professional education as required.

Right now there is a confusion among professionals because multiple aspects are getting added to this function example ESG, and professionals are facing challenge to have the appropriate education and understanding of it.

One of the other challenges which I would like to highlight is multiple platforms where the companies and the professionals are awarded, but only few of them of genuine nature and others are run by organisations focusing on making money on it. This may give a false impression that the organisations or the individuals have achieved the best in this field and complacency may kick in.

I believe professionals in this field should be always open for getting themselves educated on new technology and trying to understand its practical application instead of theoretical. Example use of AI in multiple tools and use of tools like chat GPT.

They should also be able to connect the HSE programs to the investments made in terms of rupees and what return on investment the organisations would get out of that.

How do you plan to augment the HSE function within your organization?

In most of the organisations HSE is looked as a support function and there is a less integration with the core business. The challenge here to go address is integration of the activities and the requirements of HSE into the core business activities on day to day basis.

In one of a multinational company I was associated with as a director, we had a very nice system of integrating HSE into business and

measuring its maturity as responsibility of the business leader and just not with HSE leader.

Also I am strong believer that HSE systems should be deployed as far as practically possible, because most of the time with limited resources provided we need to adopt risk based approach to address the challenges in front of us.

Any new initiatives in HSE undertaken over the past year or planned to be undertaken in future?

There are multiple activities focused upon to mature the HSE

management system in the organisation right from adopting new technology and tools till focusing upon safety psychology which should ultimately enhance the culture of the organisation.

Making the line management competent on HSE and taking ownership of it is also been looked into by making them accountable for delivery of the metrics which should ultimately impact their performance.

How do you foresee HSE progressing within India? What are the learnings from global organizations?

India growing into a growth engine is attracting lot of multinational companies here which is also putting pressure to have legal compliances as well as taking other initiatives to make sure that the people working in organisation are always safe. This is positive in one aspect because we are not reinventing the wheel and trying to adopt the best practices which are already successful in other parts of the world. This process has gone up to level of sub contractors and hence we can see improvement in the understanding of the HSE requirements. Example has we pass on the road we can see multiple construction sites where in now we can see the employees wearing personal equipments and using the right tools to get a job done which was not seen few years back.

From this context I see couple of areas where improvements can be done to enhance the process to next level.

First is educating about health safety environment from the primary stage itself to the students of various schools and colleges.

Training then on basic technical knowledge such as fire fighting,

CPR, first aid should be made mandatory for all.

The other one is the legal requirements where in there is a heavy focus on updating it as per global commitments from an environment perspective but still we are following age old laws on health and safety which is not covering multiple sectors and the many times putting health and safety in back seat.