Anglo American Leadership Safety Summit, PR & internal article, 2007
Presentation on Sirius for the Assoc. of CEs
Nuts and bolts: Safety – Are we communicating a priority or a value
Linda MacLeod Brown of Cardeas Consulting discusses approaches to embedding a safety culture.
“Safety is our number one priority” … “safety is of paramount importance” …”excellence in SHE is a top priority for us”… “Safety is one of our top priorities” … Really?
I have seen how thinking in a new way about safety leads to communicating and leading safety in better ways, resulting in a greater chance of helping to build a safety culture that lasts.
Like it or not, we all experience how priorities shift according to business circumstances.
Values, as the priniciples and beliefs that influence behaviour, are more constant and rarely compromised. A company’s culture is sustained from their set of common values.
Safety culture assumes you already have compliance firmly in place. In a true, values-based safety culture, I believe the goal must be to move beyond compliance in:
- your safety focus
- how you think about safety
- how you lead safety and
- how you communicate safety
So, work on how to ensure your leaders buy into this and make it personal, talking about their safety values instead of the company’s priority on safety.
Here are some tips that I have found useful for beginning that process…
Leadership trust: In my experience, a relationship of trust is first and fundamental to building a safety culture. Behaving safely has to start, and be seen, at the top! Otherwise, you are facing an uphill battle, and unlikely to make a difference. If leaders are trusted, then people are more likely to follow their lead and also behave in a safe manner.
Take responsibility, not culpability, for the safety of others: There’s a difference between being culpable for bad decisions others may make, and taking responsibility for failings in our own leadership communication around safety. When someone cuts corners, you should ask yourself “Was there something in my leadership and communication that led them to think that behaviour was acceptable?”
Improve the quality of your safety engagement: Are you ensuring that safety-focused communication – safety meetings, toolbox talks, tailgate huddles, or pre-shift meetings – are engaging and meaningful for teams? Or are they just another tick-box exercise? All too often, I have seen meetings be read, not led. We can make small changes to lead these in a way that means every single person wants to take ownership for safety, and gets them actively thinking about it. Change the conversation to one that actually improves safety understanding and behaviour.
Build safety into every conversation: Are you integrating safety into all business discussions, not even just those on production, or separating it out in ‘safety moments’? Whilst these ‘moments’ may focus attention, briefly, they wrongly position safety as something ‘extra’ bolted on to a conversation rather than something that should underpin everything you do.
Connect safety to core values: Recognise the common core values people tend to embrace for themselves—think about how they behave differently with their families, spouses, children and friends—in a word, their relationships with the people they love and care about, who love and care about them, and who depend on them to make the right, safe decisions daily within the family.
The key points for engaging employees on safety are the same as for any issue, but I would suggest at the core, you:
- Know who you are talking to and how you are going to best engage them
- Embed your message into everything else going on – don’t make safety separate
- Find, and make the most of, opportunities to listen and learn from the workforce
- Keep it simple, consistent and fit for purpose.
- Be proactive in, and learn from industry co-operation – safety is beyond competitive
- Remember always to CARE
Summing up: If values are the heart of your business communications, then brand, which ‘encompasses a company’s values in action, to keep a business focused on the right goals, in the right way’ is its soul. I found that when you begin to look at it this way, brand has less to do with colours, fonts, logos or emblems, and is all about how you infuse each moment, every interaction, with the distinctive essence that defines your business.
I have seen that success in communicating issues of safety is not in posters about PPE or getting equal pegging with production figures at meetings, but in making safety a value that guides everything you say and do.
Help your leaders build your company’s safety culture through ‘living’ the brand. I have seen that leaders who believe in, and care personally about, safety as a value are followed by others. Then, the organisation builds a strong safety culture…and any vision of zero harm communicated becomes achievable.
Linda MacLeod Brown works closely with companies in transition, to help then shape their strategies and delivery plans and engage employees for sustainable change, particularly in safety culture and CSR.
http://ioic.org.uk
Self Build magazine features my article on Lewis Longhouse
Cardeas creates a new video to tell a safe story from Mining Multinationals
Changing an industry is no simple task… but now mining companies can do just that.
Three years ago, in a first for the mining industry, Anglo American developed its own safety maturity model to initiate a systemic change in safety behaviour.
Cardeas has been part of the team working with Anglo and University of Queensland to ‘institutionalise’ safety risk management so that everyone makes the right decisions affecting safety’. Leading on communication and engagement efforts in this global education programme for everyone from mine-workers to the Board, Cardeas has helped challenge and positively affect how employees behave with regard to safety.
Having identified that effective management of risks was essential to a step-change in safety performance, Anglo American now urges other companies to benefit. On offer is an innovative and transformational risk management education, G-MIRM – the Global Minerals Industry Risk Management Programme.
This engaging and motivating multi-level education is set to become an industry standard. It stands tall on the strength and legitimacy of its contribution to safe production by educating and equipping employees with the knowledge and skills to better identify hazards, assess and manage risks using a standard set of tools and techniques.
View Anglo’s press statement or watch the video encouraging other mining companies to get involved.
Contact Linda MacLeod Brown at Cardeas to find out more.
Cardeas helps raise the safety bar at mining giant, Anglo American
Anglo American Safety Risk Management Programme wins the IChemE Innovation and Excellence award in Health and Safety
A cross-functional team from within Anglo, University of Queensland and external advisors began to develop a process in 2007 to ‘institutionalise’ safety risk management across Anglo so that everyone would make the right decisions affecting safety.
The Institute of Chemical Engineers has just recognised the power and effectiveness of this programme by granting it their ‘Innovation and Excellence in Health and Safety’ Award for 2009. IChemE Chief Executive Officer, Dr David Brown said: “We received a record number of award entries this year from over 20 countries. Winning an IChemE award is an outstanding achievement and I congratulate the Anglo American team on its success.”
Cardeas is part of this team, leading on communication and engagement in this global education programme for everyone from mine-workers to the Board which challenges and is positively affecting how employees behave, lead and live with regard to safety, 24/7. A first for the mining industry, the team developed its own safety maturity model to initiate this systemic change across the industry which has already seen over 3000 Anglo supervisors, managers and executives be educated in a mining industry risk management programme. The Safety Risk Management Programme is delivered through partnership with a network of universities around the world.
From a blank sheet, geography, literacy, language and differing business needs were some of the communication challenges Cardeas overcame to ensure all those undertaking the programme are engaged in the process, part of the same high quality experience, from the first time they hear of it to the packaging of educational materials they receive as well as the supporting resources provided to those delivering the education.
John Landmark, who led the programme through its first 2 years, and now Head of Transformation, Exploration for Anglo commented “Cardeas’ insights and experience with communication and stakeholder engagement ensured we stayed in touch with our audiences. The standards established … will ensure that this transformational initiative has a major impact across the mining industry.”
This engaging and motivating multi-level education is set to become an industry standard. It stands tall on the strength and legitimacy of its contribution to safe production by educating and equipping employees with the knowledge and skills to better identify hazards, assess and manage risks using a standard set of tools and techniques.
View Anglo’s press statement or watch the video encouraging other mining companies to get involved.
Contact Linda MacLeod Brown at Cardeas to find out more..