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Reduce Headcount and Cost with a Subscription QHSE Model
Integrity HSE
Overview
This video introduces a subscription-based Quality, Health, Safety, Security, and Environment (QHSE) model as a flexible alternative to traditional fixed-headcount QHSE functions. It highlights the hidden costs and limitations of fixed QHSE teams, such as variable demand for expertise, administrative burdens, and the paradox of compliance. The presentation explains how a subscription model offers scalable support, allowing businesses to adjust QHSE capability based on fluctuating risks and projects, ultimately leading to cost reductions and performance improvements. The STAR model (Startup, Turnaround, Accelerated Growth, Realignment, Sustaining Success) is used to illustrate how different business stages require tailored QHSE support, emphasizing that the goal is to match capability and cost to the organization's specific condition.
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Chapters
- Organizations face a tension between operational priorities and compliance requirements, often leading to QHSE being a secondary concern.
- QHSE roles are broad and complex, requiring expertise across multiple disciplines, which is difficult to maintain with limited in-house staff.
- The administrative burden from ISO requirements and audits can disproportionately consume resources, shifting focus from actual risk management to certification.
- Certification and accreditations can become the primary metric of success, overshadowing genuine risk reduction and safety performance.
Understanding the inherent challenges and hidden costs of traditional QHSE structures is crucial for recognizing the need for alternative, more effective models.
An organization spending a week filling out a complicated tender submission for ISO certification that is rarely reviewed unless the company progresses further in the tender process.
- Businesses have an unlimited appetite for assurance and growth but are constrained by finite resources like budget, time, and competence.
- The law acknowledges this scarcity, expecting clear arrangements and competent support proportionate to actual risk, not perfection.
- Reactive QHSE functions lead to sporadic, unpredictable effort with massive spikes, contrasting with the desired stable, predictable rhythm of prevention and improvement.
- The challenge lies not in wanting better QHSE, but in resourcing it sensibly and proportionately to actual business conditions.
This highlights the fundamental business problem that fixed QHSE models struggle to address, setting the stage for a more agile solution.
The differing levels of time and resources spent on safety in an airport concourse (low risk, high volume) versus an offshore drilling platform (high risk, lower volume), demonstrating proportionality to risk.
- A subscription model provides ongoing access to QHSE capability each month with the flexibility to adjust support levels as risk changes.
- It establishes a baseline of support for core requirements, with the ability to scale up for specific needs like projects, audits, or growth surges.
- This model offers a spectrum of support, from ad hoc consultancy and project-based assistance to retained advisors and fractional QHSE managers.
- The goal is to match support to the organization's specific risks, complexity, and internal capacity, moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach.
This chapter defines the core concept of the subscription model and its practical application, offering a tangible alternative to fixed structures.
Establishing a baseline of monthly support for core compliance, then bringing in extra hours or specialist expertise for a new project or an upcoming audit, and returning to the baseline afterward.
- In a fixed model, expert attention is often spread thinly across administrative tasks and competing demands.
- A subscription model allows for proactive direction of expert attention to high-value controls, supervision, and critical decision-making where risk is highest.
- Cost savings are achieved through reduced fixed overhead, avoidance of recruitment and churn costs, less idle time, and elimination of single-point dependencies.
- This model can also reduce hidden costs associated with incidents, rework, delays, and management distraction by bringing better capability in earlier.
This explains the tangible financial and efficiency benefits of the subscription model, directly addressing business concerns about cost reduction and resource optimization.
Instead of a fixed QHSE employee being tied up with ISO audits, a subscription model allows their attention to be directed towards high-risk areas or critical supervisory decisions.
- Performance gains come from improved control effectiveness, supervision proportional to risk, faster mobilization during risk spikes, and better data visibility.
- The key is balancing and proportioning QHSE resources to actual business conditions, not just outsourcing for the sake of it.
- The subscription model is most effective when it responds to the organization's real situation, offering a 'best fit' solution rather than a rigid structure.
- External QHSE capability should strengthen internal ownership rather than replace it, focusing attention where it matters most.
This section details how the subscription model enhances operational performance and strategic alignment, going beyond cost savings to improve overall QHSE effectiveness.
Using a subscription service to provide proportional supervision during periods of increased work tempo or growth, ensuring safety keeps pace with operational expansion.
- The STAR model (Startup, Turnaround, Accelerated Growth, Realignment, Sustaining Success) provides a framework for matching QHSE support to the business's current context.
- Startups need foundational compliance and senior judgment without the overhead of a full-time function.
- Turnarounds require rapid diagnosis, corrective action, and independent, focused expertise to address identified problems.
- Accelerated growth demands scalable systems, mobilization support, and standardization across new projects or sites.
- Realignment focuses on simplification, role clarity, and better targeting of assurance to streamline bloated systems, while Sustaining Success needs independent assurance and challenge to prevent complacency.
This model provides a practical guide for organizations to self-assess their QHSE needs based on their current business phase, enabling a more precise application of the subscription model.
A startup needing basic legal compliance and core risk assessments but not the cost burden of a full-time QHSE manager, making fractional leadership an ideal solution.
Key takeaways
- Fixed QHSE headcount often leads to inefficient resource allocation due to variable demand for expertise and administrative overhead.
- A subscription QHSE model offers flexibility to scale support up or down based on fluctuating risks and business needs.
- The economics of attention suggest that expert focus can be more effectively directed in a subscription model towards high-value controls and critical decisions.
- Subscription models can reduce direct costs (overhead, recruitment) and indirect costs (incidents, rework, distraction).
- Performance improvements stem from better control effectiveness, proportional supervision, and faster response to risk spikes.
- The STAR framework helps organizations identify the most appropriate QHSE support model based on their current business stage (Startup, Turnaround, Growth, Realignment, Sustaining Success).
- The ultimate goal is to match QHSE capability and cost to the actual business condition, strengthening internal ownership rather than replacing it.
Key terms
QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety, Security, Environment)Subscription ModelFixed HeadcountParadox of ComplianceFinite Resources vs. Infinite NeedsEconomics of AttentionSTAR Model (Startup, Turnaround, Accelerated Growth, Realignment, Sustaining Success)Fractional LeadershipProportionality to RiskWeak Signals
Test your understanding
- What are the primary hidden costs associated with maintaining a fixed QHSE team?
- How does a subscription QHSE model allow for better allocation of expert attention compared to a fixed model?
- Explain the concept of 'proportionality to risk' and how it relates to resourcing QHSE functions.
- Using the STAR model, how would the QHSE support needs differ for a startup versus a company in accelerated growth?
- What is the core principle behind deciding whether to use a subscription QHSE model, according to the video?