Purpose This paper aims to assess the ways through which the concept of health, safety and environment (HSE) is perceived by workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) oil and gas industry. The study focused on different aspects of the HSE culture and how employees with and without leadership responsibilities differed in their conceptualization of HSE culture. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted for 30 staff of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the UAE. The interviewees were purposively selected which included both those in leadership and non-leadership roles. Findings The findings revealed that the interviewees viewed HSE culture as a descriptive term, a causal phenomenon, a systemic approach or a legal requirement/obligation. Interviewees in the production and maintenance units mentioned safety most often. Employees and managers exhibited negligible differences in their usage of the HSE culture concept. Managers predominantly featured in the narratives as important drivers of HSE culture. Physical conditions, behavior and procedures, management, competence and collaboration emerged as important components of a sound HSE culture. Originality/value To enable better communication and subsequent improvement of the HSE culture, an analogical HSE culture “vehicle” was developed in the study. The vehicle is a novel illustration based on the key roles of managers and employees, as well as the main components of a sound HSE culture.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a safety climate scale for measuring the safety climate in the oil and gas industry. Design/methodology/approach The scale developed through conducting a literature review about the safety climate and constructing a question pool. The number of items was reduced to 51 after performing a screening process. Explanatory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to examine the scale’s construct validity. Findings CFA loadings were statistically significant. All Cronbach’s alpha (a) and composite reliability values support the construct reliability. The outcomes showed acceptable convergent and discriminant validity: AVEs showed acceptable values, and the square roots of AVE values showed higher values than the construct correlation values. Furthermore, all factor loadings exceeded 0.50, and the t-values were statistically significant. CFA loadings were statistically significant. Originality/value The safety climate measuring scale of 43-instrument items produced in this study is reliable and valid for the oil and gas industry.