One of the leading cement producers in the country wants to be the leader in H&S function of plant operations also. For achieving good H&S performance on sustainable basis; requires not only good management system, but equally important, is ensuring its real on-ground implementation. Ashwin Raykundalia narrates his own experiences to ICR.
At Ambuja Cement, our vision is to be the most sustainable and competitive company in our industry. Being sustainable means a win-win situation from our economic, social and environmental performance. Managing Health & Safety (H&S) performance not only makes business sense, but also minimises the negative social impact it may have. Thus H&S forms an integral part of our sustainability strategy. We strongly believe that the organisations, where people are getting harmed would fail to exist in the long run.
At Ambuja, H&S is at the center of everything we do. Our aspiration is to conduct the business with the goal of Zero Harm to people and create healthy and safe environment for our employees, contractors, communities and customers. We started our structured H&S journey, since 2008, with the implementation of a good H&S management system. However, 2013 had been a bad year for us with an unacceptable H&S performance. The years of efforts put in strengthening H&S management system and infrastructure failed to guarantee good H&S performance, year on year. This made us to think through. Number of brain storming sessions among leadership teams took place on where we need to concentrate our efforts for sustainable H&S performance.
The outcome for achieving good H&S performance on sustainable basis requires not only good H&S management system, but equally important is ensuring its real on-ground implementation.
The challenge was in on-ground implementation of H&S management system in the right spirit. Analysis indicated, some people take pride in taking risk while a few others want to take a short-cut to finish the job faster, as it normally gets rewarded.
However, we also found there were real issues that increased disconnect between the line team and H&S requirements. These being:
- Issues between the line team and H&S requirements
- Systems and process established or mandated were too exhaustive and far off from ground realities that encouraged people to bypass it
- Lack of clear communication lead to non-uniform understanding of the H&S requirements even among different H&S professionals
- H&S being mainly ?Top Down? approach, communication not reaching up to the last person in the hierarchy. This leading to lack of visible actions from leadership at different levels to demonstrate H&S as clear priority
- Lack of reward & recognition for properly following or consequences for not following H&S requirements
- People do not perceive the risk in the environment they have grown with e.g., crossing the road from anywhere and not only at Zebra crossings
- Lack of competency in doing proper hazard identification and risk assessment. Often, the root cause of incident indicated failure to identify the hazard at the first place.
- Even for identified hazards, control measures proposed are administrative or PPE instead of higher level controls like elimination, substitution and engineering measures Non-availability of skilled manpower for execution of the job
- People mindset is that they would never be the victim of an accident
- People not being aware of potential consequences of their behavior or actions
- Line team often thought H&S performance is the responsibility of H&S professionals.
We realised that increased participation and focused intervention are the key to move up fast on H&S maturity. To make Health & Safety a mass mission and address above issues, we at Ambuja Cement launched
?We Care? Our Health & Safety Transformation journey during 2nd half of 2013. The tagline of the program being Hamara Suraksha Hamara Haath. The program aimed to bring following change:
(Refer to Figure-1 on earlier page)
H&S as Line Leadership:
To bring ownership towards H&S performance in the line team, we divided our plants into small geographical area, called Zones. One of the line managers was assigned the responsibility as Zone owner. Apart from his regular line responsibility, the Zone Owner takes ownership of H&S performance of his zone. Additionally we identified a Safety Ambassador, typically a direct supervisor of workmen group. All Zone Owners and Safety Ambassadors were trained on H&S technical aspects and behavioural aspects for them being the change agents (demonstrating role model behavior) in our H&S transformation journey.
The performance of Zones was monitored on a monthly basis, based on predefined criteria. Zone owners were also empowered to rate H&S KRA of his zone members in Annual Performance Management. This has also helped in developing Zone Owners to practice leadership qualities.
Performance dialogue and Wave, the processes extended from Ambuja?s established manufacturing excellence program –People Power?, which also helped in developing ownership in the line team toward H&S performance. (Refer to Figure-2)
Top driven to bottom-up approach for engaging people and enforcing compliance
It is important to reach out to each and every person involved explaining the importance of H&S for his/her own life apart from importance to the company. The dedicated Townhalls on H&S, directly addressed by the leadership team, Web casted across Ambuja locations and ?We Care? sensitisation workshops helped us in achieving this goal. We directly reached out to all the people (more than 12,000) at our plants in 2014 and again in 2015, and listened to their point of view. We formed work groups of cross functional teams working on received inputs to convert into actionable things for implementation. This helped in demonstrating that efforts toward the change are genuine and also getting buy-in from different functions.
The inputs received helped in establishing a comprehensive reward & recognition scheme for proactive interventions to improve H&S performance. In 2015, more than 350 individuals became ?Ambuja Safety Heroes? and more than 30 teams were rewarded. These proactive interventions are captured as best practices, which are shared on a regular basis across Ambuja, thus developing the learn & share culture and multiplying successes. This helped in engaging people across all levels.
Inputs were also used in refining H&S processes and adopting engineering solutions to reduce/eliminate risks. Consequence management policy also established to deal with violations of H&S requirements, clearly demonstrating H&S as the priority. (Refer to Figure-3)
Engaging people is the first step. However, for sustained H&S performance capability, building is equally critical. We developed customised training programs for people working in focused areas ? risky operational task and trades, defensive driving training for the truck driver, etc.
Making H&S a mass mission
We did not limit ourselves within the boundaries of our plant. We thought that nurturing safety culture in schoolchildren can serve two purposes? they would help in correcting the unsafe behaviors of their parents and they would grow up with right H&S practices and behavior. So we developed and implemented H&S curriculum focusing road safety and safety at school and safety at home at all Ambuja Schools. Our CSR wing, Ambuja Cement Foundation, is also helping us to create awareness within community around our plants.
We Care program has helped in bringing visible improvement in H&S performance for Ambuja.
Thus managing H&S performance needs a lot to deal with people aspects. H&S needs to become the mass mission of an organisation if the goal of ?Zero Harm? to people is to be achieved. Ambuja Cement has been able to successfully engage people and bring a sense of ownership towards H&S performance in the line team through ?We Care? program. We believe this is the step forward in our journey to achieve leadership position in H & S performance.
Ashwin Raykundalia, Head -Health & Safety, Ambuja Cements Ltd