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Safety and operations improvement go hand in hand

There is a perception that business improvement is not compatible with, or worse, can actually undermine, safety performance at a site. This is not the case if programs actively address the issue of safety - as an integral part of improvement. The same fundamentals that are good for operations are also good for safety and our improvement methodologies which are so strong at driving improvements are just as effective when applied to safety in parallel. Furthermore, stable sites with controlled operations and low variability are safer sites.

Improvement fundamentals applied to safety

1. Safety is a value that must be communicated as non-negotiable from all levels of the leadership.

Strong visible felt leadership is a key foundation for safe sites. Managers at all levels must have a solid, consistent message that safety is an inalienable value for the business and will not be compromised. This needs to be communicated formally, but also regularly through daily conversations and the behaviours of management as they walk around - each day, forever. Improvement initiatives need to be introduced within the context of safety to ensure there is no suggestion that the drive for harm-free sites is to be compromised. Because our improvement methodologies are so strong on delivering results, behavioural change and improved wiring of a business, this is an ideal mechanism to drive improvements in safety in parallel with improvements on other financial dimensions.

2. Assign individual safety targets (leading and lagging)

Like an operations improvement effort, success in safety starts with agreement on a quantitative target that is ambitious but achievable. Too often safety goals are well intentioned but vague. Aspirations like ‘Zero Harm’ and ‘Safety First’ as overarching visions are important but must then be translated into measurable leading and lagging KPI targets for individuals if they are to create focus and traction. Most important of these are the leading (behavioural safety) KPIs - how many safe act observations has an individual carried out, have they done their safety audits etc. When these are connected to the elements of PIP’s improvement methodology, rapid improvements can be delivered.

Once individual targets are agreed, our focus moves to ‘disaggregating these targets into tangible actions that the individual can deliver within the month – along with their actions on their other priority KPIs for the month. This creates focus and velocity in the organisation as people have broken their goals down into tangible elements that they can deliver in a short period of time.

A core part of PIP’s work is tightening the performance reviews right down the organisation. In these weekly reviews, controllable, measurable leading safety KPIs are incorporated with targets within the first few weeks. Lagging KPIs (such as LTIFR) are incorporated as the work progresses. Each week, as with other KPIs, improvement actions are agreed and last week’s actions reviewed to ensure they are completed. As such, at each layer of the business the message is given very clearly that safety comes first and ensures that it is driven with ‘no escape’ execution rigour.

KPI scorecards are used to ‘close out’ every month. Safety KPIs are first.

3. Drive change by cascading behavioural safety KPIs down the organisation and holding to account

Any improvement effort is only sustainable when improvement (in this case safety) disciplines become “part of the way we do business” each day. As such, PIP helps to rapidly cascade KPIs and reviews down the organisation to the shopfloor to quickly align all levels of the business around interlocking KPIs. These reviews of individual KPIs and actions serve to focus everyone on the priorities and their individual actions to help achieve the targets for the month. The reviews cover a) Results (did we meet our KPI targets and if not why not and what do we need to do (together) to meet them next week) and b) Actions - did we do what we said we would do and if not, why not and what needs to be done to rectify that. As such, these reviews ensure that managers are walking the floor, carrying out observations and audits on procedures and getting feedback from people on how the operation is doing generally. They are a ‘closed loop reviews’, that review performance and actively drive improvement forward.

The reviews integrate all the KPIs of the business, starting with safety first, so each level learns how to manage all elements of the business. This prevents the wild swings that can occur if a large one-KPI program (safety, costs, maintenance) is introduced by itself. In our experience, if improvement is driven on one individual KPI, that KPI might improve, but after 18 months the other KPIs of the operation tend to fall over from lack of focus and the pendulum swings back again.

Example from PIP work: At an Australian nickel mine, regular Superintendent and Supervisor scorecard reviews have proven to be effective operations tools. At the start of every shift pattern, the Superintendent and Supervisor meet to agree on KPI targets and priorities for this period. Key safety deliverables to be achieved during the swing are an integral part of the scorecard. At the end of the shift pattern, they meet again to review performance versus the scorecard targets. In the first month of implementation, 87 of 100 reviews took place across the site – evidence that safety KPIs and the actions to impact them were being cascaded throughout the organisation.

4. Root cause solutions to address the key drivers

Improvement efforts in operational areas bring a rigorous focus on the key drivers of productivity or downtime. Analysis identifies the top causes and root cause solutions are proposed, the highest impact of which are prioritised as improvement ideas.

The same root cause approach that we apply to rigorously analyse the key drivers of throughput, costs or downtime are also effective when applied to safety and eliminating high incident injuries and accidents. What’s more, improvement team emphasis on coaching safety personnel in root cause problem-solving helps embed the skills to ensure ongoing safety improvements.

Example from PIP work: At a zinc smelter, a series of root cause improvement sessions helped to dramatically reduce the top causes of injuries. Led by safety personnel, supported by the improvement team and involving operators and tradesmen, these sessions generated over the period of 2 months ideas against root causes for injuries at the site (see the example below of a driver tree and the number of ideas generated on each branch). This, in combination with a strong closed-loop behavioural safety program led to employees at each level driving improved safety and rapid reductions in injuries. This was done in conjunction with a 12% increase in tonnes, a 9% reduction in total costs, 28% reduction in cost/tonne, 30% reduction in environmental incidents and a shift on the cost curve from 55 percentile down to 5 percentile.

5. Closing the loop with regular audits

A core discipline – and part of the work put in place by improvement teams – is a regular system of checks or audits to ensure that key procedures are followed and critical tasks are completed. The relevance to safety of ‘closing the loop’ is especially critical: regular auditing of procedural adherence and both the completion and effectiveness of actions can reduce injuries and save lives.

Example from PIP work: At a mine in the arctic, a process of ICAM audits has proven successful in reducing repeat incidents. One month after an ICAM is complete, two members of the employee safety committee follow up with an audit. They focus on getting first-hand evidence that all actions have been completed and are proving effective. The audits typically take a few hours and results are reported directly to the Safety Manager. The ICAM audits have been effective because they are a low-maintenance solution that reinforces individual accountability for safety by engaging employees directly in closing the loop.

This was done in parallel to driving volumes up 17%, costs down 7% and procurement savings of 16%.

Similarly, at another minerals site, we drove safety as an integral part of an improvement program - the first KPIs in reviews, measurement and reporting of both Results and Actions on safety (along with the other key KPIs for each individual), root cause problem solving and strong visible felt leadership from each layer of management.

At this site safety KPIs improved 15% in the 9 months we were assisting on site while volumes increased 25% and absolute costs reduced by 15%.

Impact and results

By adopting core improvement fundamentals - including visible felt leadership from all levels of the business, leading and lagging KPI targets, measurement and review for individuals, widespread employee involvement, cascaded Results-Action Reviews, root cause problem-solving and regular audits to close the loop - sites can turn their passion for improved safety performance into reality. This can (we believe should) be done by training managers at all levels of the business how to drive improvement across the suite of KPIs for their role. By doing this, you train them how to manage safety as part of their day to day role which helps create sustainability and drives the very stability into the operations that helps create a safe site.