October 2012
Our Countdown to zero injuries
Dave Chambers —
Progressive Enterprises/Countdown
For too long we accepted injuries in our business.
We thought they were part of the job and there was
nothing we could do to stop them.
In recent years we’ve undergone a fundamental change
in the way we view workplace health and safety. It is now a
critical part of our business. It hasn’t all been plain sailing,
however, and we’ve learnt as we’ve gone along.
www.zeroharm.org.nz
“In 2009 injuries cost more than
$6 million. By 2011 we had managed
to halve that to $3 million.”
Dave Chambers
former Managing Director
Progressive Enterprises/Countdown
■■ The Situation
Like all attempts to improve safety we started with
good intentions and thought that we were doing the
right thing. In 2007 we introduced a new programme
called Destination Zero. We were determined to get
better at health and safety and we had definite ideas
about how we would achieve this.
Though the introduction of Destination Zero saw a lot
more talk about health and safety, it did not deliver the
results we were expecting. It wasn’t until 2009 when we
thought more deeply about what safety actually meant
and started to engage our people that we really started
to see some improvements.
In 2007 we may have said we were putting safety first
but that wasn’t the experience of our people in the
workplace and it wasn’t reflected in our performance.
Our lost time injury frequency rates (LTIFR) were not
dropping below 20.
In particular, we continued to experience injuries in
certain areas of our business. One example was deli staff
cutting themselves on meat slicers. Our initial approach
was to train our deli operators in the ‘dos and don’ts’,
and if they were injured management’s response was to
discipline them. In some cases people even lost their job.
This approach was very transactional, based on process
not principle. Across the business we had rules against
which people could be held accountable. But we ended
up with so many rules people didn’t know what they
were and the managers didn’t know how to manage
against them.
We also realised that placing a priority on measuring
injury statistics was negatively influencing management
behaviours. This approach focused their attention on
managing the outcome of an injury in an attempt to
stop an LTI rather than on preventing an incident in the
first place.
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Lastly we recognised that we were not preparing our
people appropriately. This became abundantly clear
when our front-line managers told us it was unfair that
so much of their performance was based on safety
performance when they did not receive any training
in this area. This was a real wake-up call that we needed
to take a different approach.
■■ What we did about it
In 2012 we launched the Countdown to Zero
programme. This programme focused on building
credibility and engaging our people in the process.
Credibility is one of the biggest barriers to really
improving health and safety, and credibility costs. Instead
of talking about safety we took action. For example, the
German-made deli slicers we had purchased were the
same as those all other operators were using and seemed
to be industry best practice. But we decided to invest in
further guarding. This initially cost $10,000 per machine,
which was a significant investment when you are
upgrading every machine across over 100 stores.
While we have managed to reduce this cost to $4000
per machine, it is a clear demonstration that we are
committed to action.
We also designed a unique guarding system for bandsaws in our meat plant. This system took over two years
to develop and implement, and involved direct input
from team members who use this equipment. The
project required real and visible leadership from plant
management to get it across the line. Other changes,
such as an electronic tag on and off system, dedicated
band-saw users, improved training techniques and a
significant reduction in the number of band-saws in the
plant, have significantly reduced the risk of exposure in
this activity.
We know that these investments are worth it because we
recover these costs by improving our performance and
productivity. In 2009 injuries cost more than $6 million.
By 2011 we had managed to halve that to $3 million.
We are not just talking ACC costs here, but all the dollar
costs that are incurred when someone is hurt at work.
Improving kit is important. It shows staff we take their
welfare seriously and builds credibility. But it doesn’t lead
to a culture change.
To change the culture we had to really demonstrate that
we were committed. To begin with, we changed the
way safety performance was measured and we invested
in training.
One important step was to implement measures of
performance that actually meant something to our
people. One example of this was to ensure an LIT was
counted for any day lost following an injury, not just the
subsequent shift. It didn’t matter if a shift was missed
18 months after an accident – it still counted. Of course
incident reporting went up. But this new measure was
the catalyst for an attitude and behaviour change across
the business that put people first and encouraged caring
for them as soon as they started to say they were in pain.
We built a reporting culture by ensuring all incidents
were reported and at the same time raised the level of
accountability for serious injuries. Now for any serious
harm injury the responsible manager has to call me. They
have to say what has happened, what’s been done about
it and what they have learned. They can also stop work,
get the other staff in their team together and talk about
what happened. That might mean stopping part of
a plant operation or closing the bakery or deli in a
supermarket to customers – something unheard of
in the past.
This wasn’t about fixing or blaming the injured team
member as it had been previously. The focus was on
what we were doing to support this person, then to get
into a conversation about what we learned and how to
share that knowledge.
Likewise, our senior management meetings start with a
real health and safety update. Not a load of statistics but
a real story where the managers talk about an incident
and give an update on how the team member and their
families are coping. It’s a small thing but is very important
in an organisation with tens of thousands of staff to make
sure injured people are not depersonalised and treated
like a number.
Today health and safety issues are also included in
reports to the management board of Woolworth in
Australia, our owner.
Other steps we took included writing safety explicitly into
our company vision and developing Countdown safety
standards, which we believe set the bar above what is
required by regulation. We also incorporated safety into
managers’ KPIs and performance reviews, so good
performance on health and safety can be factored
into promotion decisions.
The welfare of our people is paramount but we
discovered it goes beyond the workplace. At our South
Auckland distribution centre we introduced a brief
workout at the start of shifts to physically prepare staff
as they moved tonnes of product around. From that
seed we developed wellness programmes to encourage
physical exercise, raise awareness about diabetes, and
educate about the use of foul language and domestic
violence.
I believe these changes required leadership and this had
to come from the top. The key was to take simple actions
that sent clear safety messages right across the business.
“Health and safety issues are also
included in reports to the management
board of Woolworth in Australia,
our owner.”
■■ Results
I believe our Countdown to Zero programme is now
part of the business and has been successful because
our people have been engaged in the process.
Where our LTIFR had not fallen below 20 for many years,
by the end of 2009 it had reduced to about 12 and in the
months prior to October 2012 was coming in under 5.
In addition, recent employee satisfaction surveys have
shown 95% of staff strongly agree that safety is important
at Countdown, which is wonderful to see.
We continue to innovate and the systems we recently
introduced in our distribution centre to reduce the risks
of manual handing have been very successful. Similarly,
safety refresher courses in our meat plants have been
very well attended. One recent course saw every single
band-saw operator come along on their day off – not
because they had to or were ordered to but because
they wanted a safety reminder to aid them in their work.
Overall, our people have embraced the changes and our
ability to build credibility has helped demonstrate that
safety is everyone’s responsibility. I’ve seen people
making sure their colleagues have earplugs in or safety
glasses on and I’ve personally been stopped from
entering a store where a forklift was operating.
I wasn’t wearing safety boots.
These are examples of a safety culture and while we
have a long way to go, I now believe we can achieve a
Zero Harm workplace.
Leaders make
a difference
The Business Leaders’ Health and Safety
Forum inspires and supports its members to
become more effective leaders on health and
safety. The Forum has more than 140 members,
who are CEOs or Managing Directors of
significant New Zealand companies.
Contact us
Julian Hughes, Executive Director
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +64 4 802 7069
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Or find out more at: www.zeroharm.org.nz