Cindi Nandlal’s career spans 23 years in the energy and non-energy industries. During that period, her roles expanded beyond health, safety, security, and environment (HSSE) to include a non-executive board of director for three subsidiary companies in a conglomerate. Her passion for safety and process safety is fueled by experiences with fatalities and significant events. Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) has played a major role in changing her perspective as a substantial enabler in transforming leadership and understanding context.
Currently, she serves as an HSSE practitioner with additional focus on Process Safety Management (PSM) at Point Lisas Nitrogen Limited (PLNL), a privately owned company that manufactures anhydrous ammonia in Trinidad and Tobago.
For our latest Faces of EHS profile, we sat down with Cindi to discuss how she got her start in the industry, the dangers of measuring safety with lagging indicators, and her advice to people entering the EHS workforce.
Q: How did you get your start in the field?
Post university, my goal was to get into the environmental field. I entered the working world as an on-the-job trainee at an industrial lab. Following this I started off as an HSSE officer because at the time the “E” was combined with health, safety, and security in many companies. Twenty years and five companies later, I was able to experience several industries, including port operations, downstream petrochemical, energy services, energy investments and LPG/Industrial gases.
Some of these companies gave me great access to global experts and colleagues throughout the world that up to today I can call upon for support or advice. I was fortunate as well, due to the progressive thinking of a former boss, to have spent several years on non-executive boards of directors. This allowed two things, HSSE influence at the board level that trickled into the organizations, and the opportunity to understand the business processes, governance, and constraints that can indirectly and directly impact HSSE.
Q: Who has been your biggest influence in the industry?
There is a Maori quote that says, “My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective.” It is very difficult to pinpoint one person. I have been extremely fortunate throughout my career to have subject matter experts in safety and senior leadership as mentors and coaches. They have all shared in shaping who I am as a professional and a person.
Q: What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?
Too many to count. I think the older you get the more you reflect on what is the legacy of your career, and how you can do better. One of the things that got in my way was how I viewed work and the frontline workers in such a black and white, linear, straightforward way. This belief fueled my attitude such that the messenger got in the way of the message.
One day I found myself on the receiving end of an incident “near miss,” and I had to reflect on if I could have been distracted, then what about the people who actually do the work every day. It takes a lot to step back and reflect on the approach. Curiosity, humility, and HOP has allowed me to see things in such a different way. I wish I could have been exposed to that combination sooner in my career.
Q: What’s your favorite and least favorite part about working in the industry? Would you change anything?
My favorite thing is the people I get to interact with, influence and be influenced by. There are two things that are my least favorite. One, the use of thinking, tools, and mindsets that do not fit a complex, dynamic, unforgiving high-risk workplace. And two, the view that we can treat people as numbers to be counted like money when there are injuries and incidents that detract from the care and focus on learning.
Q: What are your thoughts on safety culture? How can company leaders make safety a value within their organization?
Culture is a very complex phenomenon that shifts and shapes based on internal and external drivers. I have mixed thoughts on safety culture. It is not separate from the whole. If an organizational culture does not care about people, I do not think a safety culture would create or sustain that care, one is a subset of the other.
The organization is the shadow of the leaders. In my view, value for safety must be broken down to clear principles, expectations, and responsibilities. This is then transmitted from the leaders by what is said, what is done (including investments) and most importantly when there is an incident or accident, because this is when values are tested.
Q: What safety concerns or issues do you think need more prioritization in EHS programs?
From a holistic top-down approach there is a strong need to (re) educate boards and the C-suite on the changing face of EHS. New ways of thinking about the complexities of work, the dynamic nature of risk, and not judging performance by lagging indicators.
EHS programs need to be reflective of the dynamic work environments and constraints that workers face. We need to apply pragmatism to programs but also have the workers who will be impacted by those programs have a say in the design and evolution of those programs.
Q: What will be the impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles on the EHS industry?
I think the “why” of ESG principles is noble, essentially to operate from a space that assures we do not impose more harm to people and the planet. Companies that operate from values applied ESG long before it was termed ESG, which to me means it always comes back to values and not something imposed but because doing it because it is the right thing to do.
What worries me about ESG on the social side is the view of lagging safety statistics (i.e., injury rates) as a criterion for safety in the workplace. This can be a misleading view that workplace safety is assured from lagging outcomes, and it can encourage a host of negative effects including manipulation. We need to do more to educate the investors on the contemporary views around safety measures and metrics that are proactive and geared at controlling hazardous energy exposure as an example.
Q: How will new safety technologies influence the work being done by EHS professionals?
I think new safety technologies, like most technologies, provide a level of efficiency, data analysis, and in the engineering world, better capacity to fail safely. In my view, EHS technology does not replace the human element and the need to be in touch with insights, tacit knowledge, and interfaces with the work teams. Technology should not, as an example, replace walking the factory floors, talking, listening, and helping resolve the challenges that workers face.
Q: What are you most proud of?
The thing I am proud most of is being requested to be a mentor by a few people. I can only attribute my success to great mentors and peers, so it is an honor to be asked.
Q: Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?
EHS is a people-centered discipline, there is no getting around that. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, curious, and keep learning always. Stick to your values; mine have always kept me centered from when I entered this field to today. Get down in the trenches. The first few years of dirty work are important to understand the customer (workers), the constraints, how imperfect work is from what we learn in textbooks, coupled with the interactive complexity of dealing with people. Lastly, seek out mentors, and people who see beyond your potential that push, support, and guide you.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
I think the education of EHS professionals needs to evolve. We need to be well rounded and understand the business environment, as well as be grounded in the skills that can support our roles leading up, across, and down (i.e., the softer skills of reflection, self-awareness, empathy, listening, curiosity, critical thinking, systems thinking etc.).