Protecting What Matters Together: Workplace Safety Best Practices

Jim Weigand, Vice President and General Manager of DuPont Safety Resources, was one of the four guest presenters during the DuPont Symposium held at the World Congress.  His presentation was focused on the importance of collaborative leadership in improving workplace safety.  The following is Jim’s speech, Protecting What Matters Together:  Workplace Safety Best Practices, as delivered to the 150 attendees of the Symposium.

I’ve always believed that nothing good happens until somebody cares.  Think about it. 

If the airlines we traveled on didn’t care about safety, we may not be here today.  If the hotels we’re staying in didn’t care about safety, we may have been exposed to poor air quality or tainted food. 

We just heard from three companies that care enough to make a workplace-safety culture part of their corporate DNA.  Listen to the language they use:

For these companies--and for DuPont—workplace safety is like breathing….Once you get started, you never want to stop.

What is Collaborative Leadership?

What’s even more gratifying is that the four companies represented on this panel have started to embed their safety message and safety culture across more than 70 countries and five continents.

That demonstrates real global leadership in the safety effort.  It also shows a spirit of collaboration—working together both within our organizations and among our organizations to achieve a very important goal of worldwide workplace safety.

Someone once said that collaboration is most likely to happen in an organization when the leadership expects it.  This panel represents a group of safety leaders who expect it…and who believe that productive collaboration is our shortest and most direct path to worldwide workplace-safety success.  Let’s take a minute to look at some specifics.

The World Safety Declaration

The first is the World Safety Declaration.  Some of you may remember this initiative from the last World Congress, three years ago.  At that conference in 2005, we asked companies around the world to declare their commitment to making a difference in workplace safety.  Specifically, we asked any company interested in joining the cause…

I’m pleased to say that since 2005, we have gathered signatures from 48 companies worldwide.  These are companies that care.  The complete report is available, and we ask you to pick one up at the end of this session.  It alone is a testimonial to global collaboration, commitment, and success.

Areas of Progress

In the report you’ll see a chart on reported areas of progress by the signers.  It’s an important one. On the left are the safety objectives that every signing company is attempting to achieve.  On the right, the bar chart measures how we’re doing so far with each objective.  To me, the results indicate that we’re headed in exactly the right direction. 

We’re doing best in driving the safety culture across companies and in line-management accountability for safety.

No surprise there. Senior management in participating companies has sounded the alarm, and the alarm has been heard throughout the organization.  It also indicates that collaboration is taking place within the companies.

Our weaker results are also not terribly surprising:

On behalf of DuPont, congratulations to the charter signers for such encouraging initial results.

DuPont Results

To DuPont, safety is no accident. Caring enough to adopt the correct safety measures goes back to our founder, E.I. DuPont.  His first product was explosives, which you might say is an inherently risky business. 

But Mister DuPont always believed that the safest risk is the one you don’t take.  So as he built his first powder mills along the Brandywine River in Delaware, he spaced them at a safe distance from each other and from neighboring communities, so an explosion at one plant wouldn’t affect the others.

With that thinking in our corporate DNA, it’s no surprise that our global injury goal is zero.  We’re making great progress towards that goal, and that progress is being recognized.

Just yesterday, DuPont Korea manager Cheoroo Won was awarded a bronze medal for safety by the Korean government.  He was praised for his distinguished leadership to drive the safety culture across DuPont Korea sites, and for his line management accountability for safety.  Congratulations to Cheoroo for that very recent--and very timely--award.

DuPont has made great strides in improving in our safety performance over last few years, but until all employees go home from work safely, we will not rest. Danger never rests, either.

Collaborative Leadership – An Integration

So what does workplace safety have to do with sustainability?  When most people think sustainability, they think environment.  But last Fall, we asked 250 business leaders—public and private-sector leaders—to join us in Geneva at the DuPont Leadership Forum to discuss the connection between the two.

We discussed the changing role of Safety, Health, and Environment functions.  And we concluded that in a global business environment that has taken on some of the characteristics of the natural environment…with all its complexity and interdependencies…it’s no longer about safety or health or environment.  It’s about safety and health and the environment.  They are inseparable.

DuPont Sustainability Goal

We brought that discussion home with us and started to explore how we could apply it very practically to our business.  We considered the things that were most important to us from the standpoint of sustainability.

Things like…

We also considered that in our platform—DuPont Safety and Protection—more than a quarter of our revenue comes from new products.

When we put these things together, the answer became obvious.  By 2015, we needed to create a thousand new products that will help protect lives.

We’re well on our way.

Understanding Perceptions of Safety

So once you’ve identified workplace safety as a priority, how do you measure your progress?

First, you need to know where you are today.  What are employees thinking about safety… employees from the executive suite to the factory floor?  Why are some programs not effective?
Why are some programs completely ignored?  How can we identify the hidden problems in the safety process?  And how can we establish benchmarks to measure future safety performance?

At DuPont, we’ve come to rely on the Safety Perception Survey, both internally and to help customers improve workplace safety.  It’s just 24 questions that cut straight to the core of what all employees think about safety, and whether they think about it at all. 

It exposes whether safety rules are followed or not.  It examines how directly employees and managers are involved in audits, incident investigations, and safety meetings.  It highlights the importance of safety with regard to quality, schedule, and cost.  And it even assesses employee attitudes about off-the-job safety.

Global Competitive Benchmarking Data

The survey indicates exactly where your company stands, both internally and in comparison with similar companies.  It includes nine years’ worth of benchmark data, both from companies with excellent safety performance and from those that under-perform from a safety standpoint.

The benchmark data are compiled from 200-thousand survey responses from around the world…51 industries in 41 countries and more than 11-hundred plant sites.  So it provides an excellent representative sample to measure any company’s safety perception against.

The survey data help you answer difficult questions…Like why can some sites completely avoid recordable incidents and others seem to accumulate them?  Sometimes the analysis requires a little digging into responding companies’ values and beliefs, but the digging is worthwhile. 

However, data on a shelf is useless.  It only becomes valuable when it becomes fuel for change—plotting the course between the present safety reality and the future vision.

The Safety Perception Survey in Action

Here’s an example from real life.  One company we worked with operates ten sites, each with a set of safety policies and procedures.  At all sites, managers are held accountable for safety, and each site had dedicated safety-management personnel.

A logical person would conclude that safety statistics from site to site should have been about the same.  But in reality, statistics fluctuated wildly from site to site, from good to very bad.

We administered the survey and conducted focus groups and interviews.  We found that respondents blamed the company for sloppy safety management—lack of management commitment…communication breakdowns…and inconsistent safety leadership.

Once we understood the data, we developed a plan and kicked off a 15-month safety-improvement process.  I’m pleased to say that this led to 45 percent fewer injuries as well as better employee morale at all sites. This is collaborative leadership at its best.

Collaborative Leadership Today at DuPont

A few minutes ago I said that collaboration happens when the leadership expects it.  At DuPont, the collaboration starts at the top with Chad Holliday, who is not only our CEO, but also our chief safety officer.

The safety culture is not only practiced, but actually felt as well.  This sends a clear and dynamic message to all employees that our company’s leadership is about more than driving revenue and contributing to shareholder value.  It’s also about protecting and preserving the organization’s most valuable resource—its employees.

Feel, Believe and Act on Values

And globally, the safety collaboration is already being seen and felt and it’s gaining momentum. Companies are already working together to make a difference. Companies like CNPC, who recently invited DuPont to inspect a new facility for safety.  And companies like Pemex, with 93-percent fewer lost-work incidents in recent years.

If it isn’t already obvious, DuPont is passionate about safety.  Always has been and always will be.  We believe that it’s our responsibility to spark this passion in other companies around the world.  Not only is a solid safety culture the world’s cheapest and most effective insurance policy…it’s also the right thing to do.  If you care.

This is one of the primary benefits of collaborative leadership—the ability and responsibility to collectively protect what really matters.  It should be our collective goal to send all employees safely home to their families and loved ones after a hard day’s work.

And if we do it right…if we exercise collaborative leadership…if we declare our intents and monitor our progress…if we diligently create and support a safety culture from the top down and across the globe…we will all receive the ultimate benefit of safety today—the opportunity to enjoy tomorrow.