Leading the Way to a Safer Tomorrow

September 16, 2024

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Workplace safety was regarded as a regulatory requirement for years, and companies employed personnel to ensure compliance. Today, many companies take a much more proactive and engaging stance. In this edition of Experts Corner, Nigel Vanderkooi, Operations Manager for SMS Equipment's Fort Hills Branch, shares insights on building a branch-wide safety culture.

What's changed about mining safety?

In the past, safety was seen as reactive—not much happened unless something went wrong or someone was injured. It was also very much about compliance. Safety people were like officers enforcing rules, often citing people for violations. This behaviour led employees to focus on avoiding being caught not following the "rules" rather than genuinely committing to safety practices. That was how safety was viewed not just in mining but many other industries.

So, the big difference for us is that we've shifted the culture in this branch, which began before I arrived here four years ago. The idea behind that was that safety was no longer about enforcement. It is about empowering the folks who are doing the work to be able to speak up, take control of the task and the safety-related aspects, and make the best choices to ensure that they could complete that task safely. So, it's all framed with their well-being in mind.

How does this affect the day-to-day work in a mine?

The main thing is that people have different ways of thinking that impact how they approach their work. We have a company-wide program around what we call the "stop-and-think” mindset, which is all about not rushing through the work. We consider all the hazards, what could go wrong, what can seriously injure us, and the best way to control those hazards. We want everybody to have a questioning mindset when planning their work. So, there is a lot of discipline behind this.

This takes time, of course. I've been on this journey for four years with this branch, and this journey had started a few years before that.

How do you track your progress?

Reporting Leading Indicators is our main tool for this. That includes near misses of course, but also, any unsafe conditions or unsafe actions that people notice. We also recognize and track positive observations which encourages our team to repeat that behaviour or decision. Initially, this started as a checkbox, but we didn't want it to be just that – we wanted the leading indicators to be meaningful and impact everybody's safety throughout the day. So now, leading indicators have become a behaviour change management tool. We use them as a tool to have conversations with the team to understand the concerns, and that's actually evolved more into everyone holding the leadership team accountable to following through with their concerns, questions, and comments around safety.

How do you deal with people's fear of speaking out?

It's how you approach the situation when something is brought up. One of the points we reinforce on our sites is that respectful interventions are expected. So, it's how you bring things up, and how you respond when issues are brought up. It can't be dealt with in a negative sort of connotation or light. You really have to ensure that the folks speaking up feel that they're being heard and that you fully understand their concern or ask. So, following through on that is particularly important.

How does your branch feel about your record for no injuries?

We are proud of that, of course – we're now approaching a million hours with no injuries. But we don't like to see those numbers as targets. This is about day-to-day activities and actions and people taking their personal safety seriously. We don't have a target we're trying to achieve. We're just trying to make sure everybody goes home every day. That's the only target that really matters.

How does creating a safety culture affect the other aspects of the business?

It has a very positive impact on work culture. If you have a safety culture that is working, like ours, the rest of the business typically follows along. It's all about how team members interact with each other. If they're used to having those conversations and supporting each other, that goes beyond just the safety conversations. It applies whenever somebody is looking for advice about handling a particular task, even an admin item.

So, it affects everything, because it's a whole picture of how we operate and how we do business.

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