Goal Zero is more than just a metric; it is the company's core ambition to achieve no harm and no leaks across all global operations.
In 2022, the focus was specifically on shifting the culture from just "following rules" to a "Learner Mindset"—acknowledging that humans make mistakes and designing systems that can "fail safely."
The Three Pillars of Goal Zero
To achieve the target of zero incidents, focuses on the three highest-risk areas of their business:
| Pillar | Focus Area |
| Personal Safety | Protecting individuals from injury through the 9 Life-Saving Rules. In 2022, these rules were simplified into "I" statements (e.g., "I always wear my seatbelt") to drive personal ownership. |
| Process Safety | Preventing the unplanned release of hazardous materials (leaks). This involves rigorous design, maintenance, and inspection of physical assets like refineries and rigs. |
| Transport Safety | Managing the risks of road, sea, and air travel. Vehicles drive the equivalent of 70 laps of the earth every day, making "journey management" a top priority. |
Key 2022 Initiatives and Developments
Introduction of "Failing Safely": In May 2022, updated its Goal Zero Handbook to emphasize Human Performance. The goal was to move away from blaming individuals for errors and instead look at "latent conditions"—system flaws that make an error more likely to happen.
AI and Digital Safety (T-Pulse): By 2022, expanded the use of T-Pulse, an AI-automated monitoring solution. Using CCTV and AI, the system identifies unsafe behaviors or equipment issues in real-time. In 2022, it helped trigger thousands of interventions that prevented potential harm.
Safety Day 2022: holds an annual global "Safety Day" where all operations stop to discuss safety culture.
7 The 2022 theme focused heavily on psychological safety—encouraging workers (especially contractors) to "speak up" without fear of consequences if they see something unsafe.Contractor Alignment: Since contractors perform a vast majority of the "frontline" work, Shell used 2022 to tighten the Contractor Safety Leadership program, ensuring partners adhere to the same "Goal Zero" standards as Shell employees.
Measuring Success
Measures Goal Zero through "Zero Days"—days where no fatal incidents, personal injuries, or significant spills occur. While the ultimate target is always 100%, the 2022 performance reports highlighted a 30% reduction in operational carbon emissions since 2016, showing that Goal Zero (no leaks) is increasingly tied to environmental "Net Zero" goals.
If the Learner Mindset is the engine that drives improvement, Psychological Safety is the oil that keeps that engine from seizing up. It is the belief that you will not be punished, humiliated, or marginalized for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
1. The Core Purpose: Breaking the "Silence"
In high-risk industries like oil and gas, the most dangerous thing is a "hidden" risk. Psychological safety ensures that when a worker sees a "weak signal" (a small thing that feels wrong), they feel safe to report it immediately.
Without Psychological Safety: People hide mistakes to avoid blame. Small errors go unnoticed until they snowball into a major explosion or spill.
With Psychological Safety: People admit mistakes early. The team learns, the system is fixed, and a major incident is prevented.
2. The Four Stages
Framework encourages moving through four stages of safety to reach a high-performance culture:
| Stage | What it looks like at the "Frontline" |
| 1. Inclusion Safety | "I feel like I belong on this rig/site and my team values me." |
| 2. Learner Safety | "I feel safe asking 'Why do we do it this way?' or 'I don’t understand this tool.'" |
| 3. Contributor Safety | "I feel safe suggesting a better way to isolate this valve." |
| 4. Challenger Safety | "I feel safe telling the supervisor, 'Stop! This isn't right,' even if it delays the job." |
3. Key 2022 Leadership Behaviors
In 2022, emphasized that psychological safety is driven by leaders. They introduced specific behaviors to foster this:
Demonstrating Vulnerability: Leaders started saying, "I don't have all the answers," or "I made a mistake in the planning of this task." This "gives permission" for others to be honest.
Responding Positively to Bad News: How a leader reacts to a mistake determines if the next mistake will be reported. In 2022, the goal was to replace "Who did this?" with "What happened, and how can we prevent it?"
"Stop Work Authority": Every employee and contractor is given the formal right to stop a job. Psychological safety ensures they actually use that right without fearing they will be fired or yelled at for "wasting time."
4. The Link to "Human Performance"
Psychological safety is the bridge to Human Performance (HP) principles. HP acknowledges that workers are the "masters of their job." If they don't feel psychologically safe, they won't share the "hacks" or "workarounds" they use to get the job done. By sharing these workarounds safely, Shell can redesign the process to be officially safer.
Summary: Psychological safety isn't about "being nice." It is about interpersonal risk-taking for the sake of survival. It turns every employee into a "safety sensor."
In the context Goal Zero (the ambition to achieve no harm and no leaks), Psychological Safety is the foundational "safety net" for the human mind.
If the Learner Mindset is the engine that drives improvement, Psychological Safety is the oil that keeps that engine from seizing up. It is the belief that you will not be punished, humiliated, or marginalized for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
1. The Core Purpose: Breaking the "Silence"
In high-risk industries like oil and gas, the most dangerous thing is a "hidden" risk. Psychological safety ensures that when a worker sees a "weak signal" (a small thing that feels wrong), they feel safe to report it immediately.
Without Psychological Safety: People hide mistakes to avoid blame. Small errors go unnoticed until they snowball into a major explosion or spill.
With Psychological Safety: People admit mistakes early. The team learns, the system is fixed, and a major incident is prevented.
2. The Four Stages
2022 framework encourages moving through four stages of safety to reach a high-performance culture:
| Stage | What it looks like at the "Frontline" |
| 1. Inclusion Safety | "I feel like I belong on this plant/company and my team values me." |
| 2. Learner Safety | "I feel safe asking 'Why do we do it this way?' or 'I don’t understand this tool.'" |
| 3. Contributor Safety | "I feel safe suggesting a better way to isolate this valve." |
| 4. Challenger Safety | "I feel safe telling the supervisor, 'Stop! This isn't right,' even if it delays the job." |
3. Key 2022 Leadership Behaviors
In 2022, emphasized that psychological safety is driven by leaders. They introduced specific behaviors to foster this:
Demonstrating Vulnerability: Leaders started saying, "I don't have all the answers," or "I made a mistake in the planning of this task." This "gives permission" for others to be honest.
Responding Positively to Bad News: How a leader reacts to a mistake determines if the next mistake will be reported. In 2022, the goal was to replace "Who did this?" with "What happened, and how can we prevent it?"
"Stop Work Authority": Every employee and contractor is given the formal right to stop a job. Psychological safety ensures they actually use that right without fearing they will be fired or yelled at for "wasting time."
4. The Link to "Human Performance"
Psychological safety is the bridge to Human Performance (HP) principles. HP acknowledges that workers are the "masters of their job." If they don't feel psychologically safe, they won't share the "hacks" or "workarounds" they use to get the job done. By sharing these workarounds safely, Shell can redesign the process to be officially safer.
Summary: Psychological safety isn't about "being nice." It is about interpersonal risk-taking for the sake of survival. It turns every employee into a "safety sensor."
In Goal Zero framework, Human Performance (HP) is the scientific approach to understanding why people do what they do. It shifts the focus from "trying to stop humans from making mistakes" to "designing systems that can handle human mistakes without someone getting hurt."
As of 2022, refreshed safety strategy is built on Five Human Performance Principles.
The 5 Principles of Human Performance
Shell adopted these principles to move away from traditional "blame and train" methods toward a more resilient system.
| Principle | Meaning in Action |
| 1. People make mistakes | Mistakes are normal and predictable. Even the best, most experienced operator will eventually have a "slip" or "lapse." Goal Zero aims to build systems that allow people to fail safely. |
| 2. Blame fixes nothing | Blaming an individual is an "easy out" that ignores the real problem. If you fire a person but leave a confusing valve in place, the next person will eventually turn it the wrong way too. |
| 3. Context drives behavior | People don't wake up wanting to have an accident. If someone took a shortcut, it was likely because the "context" (time pressure, confusing tools, or conflicting rules) made that shortcut seem like the best way to get the job done at that moment. |
| 4. Learning is vital | We must learn from "normal work," not just when something goes wrong. By understanding how work is actually done (the "Black Line") vs. how it’s written in a manual (the "Blue Line"), we can identify risks before they cause harm. |
| 5. Response matters | How a leader reacts to bad news or a mistake determines whether people will be honest in the future. A productive response focuses on "What happened?" and "What can we fix?" rather than "Who did it?" |
Key Concept: The "Blue Line" vs. the "Black Line"
A major part of 2022 HP training is the gap between these two lines:
The Blue Line (Work as Imagined): This is the perfect world described in procedures and manuals. It assumes everyone follows every rule, every tool works, and the weather is always good.
The Black Line (Work as Done): This is reality. It involves "hacks," workarounds, and adaptations that workers use to deal with broken tools, missing parts, or tight deadlines.
Human Performance aims to close this gap. By being curious about the "Black Line," can update the "Blue Line" (procedures) to be more realistic and safer.
Why this matters for Goal Zero
Under the old mindset, a "No Harm, No Leaks" goal could lead to people hiding mistakes to keep the stats looking good. By applying Human Performance, Shell acknowledges that:
Safety is not the absence of accidents; it is the presence of barriers.
Humans are the solution, not the problem. Their ability to adapt and solve problems is what keeps the plant running; the goal is to support those humans with better "error-tolerant" designs.
The results of Goal Zero campaign between 2022 and 2025 reflect a period of intense technological integration and a cultural shift toward "Human Performance." While the ultimate goal is always zero incidents, the data shows a complex picture of significant digital wins balanced against the persistent challenges of large-scale industrial operations.
Here is a breakdown of the results and key performance indicators (KPIs) from 2022 to the start of 2026:
1. Personal Safety: The SIF-F Metric
The group has increasingly moved away from looking only at "Lost Time Injuries" to a more rigorous metric: Serious Injury and Fatality Frequency (SIF-F). This measures incidents that actually caused—or had the high potential to cause—life-changing harm.
The Trend: By 2024, the group reported a SIF-F of 1.5, a notable improvement from the 2.6 reported in 2023.
The Reality: Despite the downward trend in rates, the group has publicly acknowledged the continued difficulty in eliminating all fatalities. In 2022, two contractor fatalities were reported; 2024 and 2025 reports continued to emphasize that while frequency rates were dropping, the "Goal Zero" (absolute zero) remains the most difficult milestone to sustain over a full calendar year.
2. Digital Safety & AI (The T-Pulse Impact)
One of the most measurable "wins" of the 2022–2025 period was the scaling of T-Pulse, AI-driven computer vision system.
Deployment: Expanded to 26 major sites by 2025.
Preventative Results: Since its inception, the system has generated over 20,000 alerts for potential safety violations (such as missing PPE, improper lifting, or people in "red zones").
The "Save" Count: credits T-Pulse with over 1,300 direct interventions between 2020 and 2025 that likely prevented significant harm or leaks.
3. Process Safety: Tier 1 and Tier 2 Events
Process safety refers to keeping "the product in the pipe" (preventing leaks and explosions).
2024–2025 Performance: In 2024, recorded 90 Tier 1 and Tier 2 incidents, an increase from 63 in 2023.
The Analysis: This increase was partly attributed to more rigorous reporting standards and a larger operational footprint as new projects (like the Whale platform in the Gulf of Mexico) came online. It served as a "wake-up call" that led to the 2024/2025 Safety Day theme focusing on "Before I Start Work"—emphasizing a pause to verify barriers before any high-risk task.
Summary Table: Goal Zero Key Metrics (2022–2024/25)
| Metric | 2022 Result | 2024/2025 Result | Performance Note |
| SIF-F | ~2.5+ | 1.5 | Significant reduction in high-potential harm. |
| Total Recordable Case Frequency (TRCF) | 0.95 | 0.81 - 0.90 | Remained relatively stable/slight improvement. |
| Operational Carbon Emissions | -30% (vs 2016) | -60% (vs 2016) | Massive win for the "No Leaks/Net Zero" overlap. |
| Routine Flaring | 0.1M tonnes | Zero | Achieved "Zero Routine Flaring" by Jan 1, 2025. |
4. Cultural Evolution: From "Compliance" to "Learning"
The most significant "result" of the Goal Zero campaign isn't just a number; it’s the change in how the frontline works.
Psychological Safety Integration: By 2025, "Safety Day" and "Learner Mindset" workshops have moved from high-level theory to daily toolbox talks.
Stop Work Authority: Reports show an increase in the number of worker-initiated stop-works. While this technically slows down production, leaders in 2025 celebrated these as "Goal Zero Wins," as they prove workers feel safe enough to prioritize safety over schedule.
Environmental Goal Zero: The campaign successfully merged "Safety" with "Environment." By 2025, a methane leak is treated with the same "Goal Zero" urgency as a physical injury, leading to the 0.04% methane intensity achieved in late 2024.
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