Challenge
For our client, a global chemicals company, Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) had always been one of its top priorities. A recent spike in recordable incidents at one of its largest sites had caused concern about the sustainability of the recent HSE initiatives at the site.
People sitting at a corporate level saw the site as rigid and difficult to influence. The employees on site did not feel valued for what they felt their real performance to be. A high turnover at management team level had introduced a series of different management styles. Over the years many improvement initiatives had been started, but all had faded out over time.
There was a tendency in the organisation to tackle too many new initiatives and take on more work than could be handled. People at all levels in the organisation complained about these excessive workloads, and any improvements that were made progressed very slowly. As a result, people were frustrated.
Approach
Axisto started by interviewing people. By listening in an unbiased way, we were able to understand their views and get a feel for their hot topics. There were numerous concerns: many issues were not dealt with and “put to bed”; new methods and tools were regularly forced upon employees, irrespective of whether they were appropriate for the situation; and people were concerned that this programme would turn out to be just another fad and not be delivered successfully. However, we also realised that people did have a very clear memory of better times, when the energy had been high and good performance had been delivered. Thus, we encountered an organisation that, contrary to corporate’s view, had a lot of energy for change and a willingness to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Five critical success factors were identified: creating a compellingHSE vision that everyone felt co-ownership of (the dot on the horizon); streamlining the work-permit process and the ARIA process (and getting the accountabilities clear); making time available to work on the HSE programme; integrating the various HSE-related business processes and methods; and setting up effective programme communication.
Using multi-disciplinary teams, we built on what was already in place and working well. We focused on the various loose HSE elements around maintenance and production as well as the people development process (including the behaviour description framework) and the actual HSE performance. This approach generated a lot of positive energy.
As a backbone for the programme, we implemented a leadership development programme that focused on the team leaders and production leaders and involved members of the site management team. It facilitated peer-to-peer learning and led to a better connection between the various levels in the organisation as well as between the various organisational units.
Early in the programme, a crisp and powerful HSE vision was developed with members of the site management team. Through a cascading process, in which the higher level shared the vision with the next level down, the vision came to life, was enriched and
became “multi-lingual”. We ended up with a vision that gave direction and energy to all levels in the organisation.
Using a workgroup consisting of representatives from production, maintenance and HSE, the work-permit process was streamlined, accountabilities were clarified and standard work was captured in work instructions.
The existing HSE behaviours framework was not practical in supporting the development of effective behaviour in the day-to-day work. Therefore, a team made up of production, maintenance and HSE team leaders, together with employees from HR, worked together to turn this into something that people could use. The new framework still had the four behaviour characteristics, but now with easy-to-visualise descriptions at four levels, from reactive to interdependent (i.e. the four levels in the Bradley Curve). At each level, behavioural examples were formulated. The workgroup had to imagine what the behaviours at the different levels would look like in day-to-day work on the shopfloor. This whole development process appeared to have a strong calibration effect and clarified what behaviours would look like at different levels: the site had initially assumed they were comfortably at level 3; however, when formulating the examples, they soon realised they were only at level 2.
The HSE Key Performance Indicator framework appeared to be strongly biased towards “lagging” indicators. Along with addressing the work-permit and ARIA processes, a series of “leading” indicators was introduced. This supported a full integration of HSE into the broader operational management by introducing “leading” KPIs into the daily and weekly meetings. In addition, the charters of some meetings were adapted to enable effective control and monitoring of both the work-permit and ARIA processes and to
support the development of more effective behaviour.
The leadership development programme consisted of both formal training days and on-the-job coaching. It proved to be a powerful backbone of the programme because it integrated the five critical factors by reflecting on what had been done and determining the short-term next steps. The regular meetings for team leaders, production leaders and the site management
team are now formally used for developing people, learning from peers and ensuring consistency of work practices. Leaders at all levels in the organisation are more effective at supporting and coaching their people in their personal development and encouraging them to continually improve their performance.
Results
- Significant improvement in HSE performance:
- 75% fewer recordable incidents
- 75% fewer first-aid incidents
- 200% increase in safety improvement proposals, many of which were implemented by the shopfloor employees themselves.
- LMRAs reduced from 1 to 2 “unplanned” per day to 1 to 2 “planned” per week.
- Streamlining of the operational reporting at shiftly, daily, weekly and monthly frequencies, with the inclusion of “leading” HSE Key Performance Indicators.
- Behaviour Development Framework integrated into the people development process and daily performance management.
- An established structure of peer-to-peer learning and coaching events supported by effective coaches in the organisation.
- A much more positive view of the site by corporate management.
- A fully delivered programme and a reinvigorated workforce, made proud by the results they have achieved.
- Revaluation in the organisation’s culture with regard to focus, correct priority setting and seeing things through to a successful end result.
