Electricity + Control November 2018

PLANT MAINTENANCE, TEST + MEASUREMENT

have data to help prevent future injuries. The data tells us a great deal about workplace behaviours, including near misses, good catches and interven- tions. Top performing organisations discuss acci- dent and injury prevention, and analyse near miss- es and good catch trends to find a way to reinforce safe behaviours. The industry should look at its most ‘error-likely tasks’ for the week. Based on that data, the activ- ities with the highest probability for something to go wrong are identified. By giving those situations attention, the chances of accidents decrease. This is where the future of safety data and performance is headed. Embrace a zero injury mindset While outage durations are a key performance in- dicator, worker safety and productivity are not mu- tually exclusive. The fact is: a safe workplace is a productive workplace. Research from Rockwell Automation shows plants in the top 20% of overall equipment ef- fectiveness have injury frequency rates 18 times lower than average performers and 60 times lower than poor performers. A company with a strong safety culture is one that always puts worker safety first and is willing to stop work to address workers’ concerns. A culture where no one – not foremen, not superintendents, not even executives – resists being told when they are doing something that might be unsafe.

instruction. Coaches do this because they want the players to improve. We should think about em- ployees and safety in the same way. Research supports this approach. Zenger Folk- man, a leadership development consultancy, did a study of a large energy organisation and found em- ployees who expressed that they received good coaching from their managers had employee com- mitment scores in the 88th percentile of survey respondents. This is critical to safety success, particularly during outages, when you are often dealing with a transient workforce. It is important that manag- ers and supervisors take this part of their job se- riously. As plant operators and contractors look to improve safety performance in the future, shifting the mindset of leaders from managers to coaches will be critical. Use data to avoid risk We are on the precipice of a data revolution and today’s technology enables us to gather real-time information on plant and worker performance that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago. Some of the impacts of this shift are already being felt. Today, when an injury occurs on a plant site, alert systems are in place to notify critical person- nel and executive leadership almost immediately. These communications give leaders the ability to address issues quickly and appropriately. We now

Worker safety and productivity are not mutually exclusive. A safe workplace is a productive workplace.

Author: John McCormick is vice president of Fossil Operations

Electricity + Control

NOVEMBER 2018

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