Within the period of 25-28 February, 2019 a psychosocial study was conducted at the Armenian NPP in the framework of the WANO support mission aided by the «Rosatom Technical Academy» APE ANO with a view to assess the compliance  of the «HAEK» CJSC managers with the leadership skills.

The following Russian experts participated in the WANO support mission: Elena Chernetskaya, Candidate of Psychological Sciences and Head of the Training and Methodological Centre “Psychophysiological ensuring of personnel occupational reliability” (“PEPOR” TMC) of the Rosatom Technical Academy, as well as leading specialists of the “PEPOR” TMC Tatyana Belykh, Candidate of Psychological Sciences and Viktoria Shabanova, Master of Psychology.

The Armenian NPP team included Ruben Abrahamyan, Head of the Quality Assurance Department (QAD), Gagik Petrosyan and Ashot Sargsyan, Leading Engineers of the QAD, Hermine Poghosyan, Engineer of the QAD, Gagik Mkrtchyan, Leading Engineer of the Operating Experience Department (OED), and Meri Gevorgyan, Psychologist of the Training Centre (TC).

Ruben Abrahamyan, the Head of the Quality Assurance Department of the Armenian NPP expressed the willingness of the Armenian NPP management to continuously improve the leadership of the managers in ensuring safety and reliability of the plant operation and he emphasized the importance of maintaining the atmosphere of trust so that the personnel can openly express their opinion about the issues related to efficiency and adequacy of the managerial decisions to be taken.

The psychosocial study was comprised of a number of activities, including:

• personnel questionnaire where 586 employees of different profession-position categories took part,
• interview with personnel of different profession-position groups (19 people),
• focus groups with personnel of different profession-position groups (3 focus groups, a total of 33 people);
• observation of the production meeting at the level of the chief engineer,
• analysis of documentation according to the Armenian NPP activity areas.

In the framework of the mission it was noted that the plant management continuously gave consideration to the issues of ensuring safety and made considerable efforts to maintain the safety at an appropriate level complying with international standards.

The results of this study will serve for the managers of production staff groups as additional means to assess pressing issues, requiring corrective actions, as well as will be a mechanism of plant personnel feedback in improving the managerial decisions.