DESCRIPTION
Sapphire (a wholly owned subsidiary of Tarmac) launched a new multi-site safety initiative in 2017 focused on empowering the four sites to achieve a strong and effective leadership style. The objective was to achieve sustainable changes in behavioural safety and improve the safety culture through engaging communications and accountability.
The ‘Stand up for Safety’ campaign name was chosen by the sites. The campaign promoted preventive safety achieved through the support and engagement of all members of the teams. A system was set up that would reward the site teams and individuals for progress and, recognise where employees had 'gone the extra mile'.
The scheme involved each site manager completing a PowerPoint presentation every four months and presenting it to the Sapphire Senior Management Team (SMT). All managers attend the meeting.
The PowerPoint presentations focus on the six criteria below. The information provided includes both quantitative and qualitative measures of what has been achieved over the period being reported. An example of evidence provided would be before and after images highlighting the impact of a change.
- Statistics on: Lost Time Incidents, Medical Injury, First Aid
- Near hits reported by type: unsafe acts, unsafe condition and near miss
- Ratio of the total near hits reported by number of individuals on-site
- Housekeeping status and improvements
- List of new safety actions and initiatives launched
- List of safety actions and initiatives implemented
The criteria and guidelines for each element were shared and agreed by all, in advance. For each site and criteria, the SMT determine a score using a scale of one to 5. For each review period, the members of the site receive points equal to the average score obtained but only if equal to four or 5, as the objective is to reward good performance.
Points are accumulated by each individual. Lists of low monetary value point-based items are made available and the team members personally manage their points based on their preference.
The Sapphire GM appointed one member of the SMT to be the Safety Sponsor for each of the sites, this has meant that support and assistance is available to encourage full team engagement, progress and validation of the sites’ efforts.
The images show the sort of on-site improvements that were achieved, in this example in the re-organisation of the way recycled tyres were stored.
BENEFITS
- Extremely well received within the sites
- Increased reporting and reviewing of unsafe acts and unsafe conditions (+22%)
- Significant housekeeping improvements across the sites
- Individuals taking real pride and responsibility for their environment
- Improved safety behaviour and culture across all sites
- Stronger safety leadership, engagement and effectiveness
- Increased communications between the sites and awareness of what other sites doing
- Improved sharing and adoption of best practice
- Encouraged engagement and contributions from all members of site team
- Improved communications and feedback between site teams and management.