Over the past 24 years 23,000 employees of the U.S. company Cargill Inc. have been trained by DNV in basic safety principles. During these years the company has doubled the size of its business while reducing incident rates by 50% or better. A major contributor to this success is a management team that puts safety in the forefront of productivity.
All work, however urgent, must be done safely, says Dave Larson, executive vice president of Cargill. Risky operations are a part of our employees daily work, and we must make sure our managers understand the seriousness of the situation and are capable of communicating the safety message to all involved.
He points out that there are no magic bullets in this strategy. Its just a matter of gaining trust from the employees. Managers must walk the talk; go out in the field, talk about safety, listen to those involved, get their point of view and do something about it.
Highlighting communication
U.S.-based Cargill is one of the worlds largest privately owned companies. It crosses cultures in over 100 different business units with a work force of 85,000 employees in 59 countries, largely engaged in the processing, handling and transportation of food products. The company has implemented a safety culture that runs throughout the whole organisation, highlighting communication as the main tool to get the message through from the very top down to operating employees.
As its operations expanded during the 1970s, Cargill realised an increased emphasis on safety was needed. The high complexity of operations and a more demanding market with an increased focus on low costs and high quality products and services made Cargill consider how to change its operations in a cost-effective way. A strategy was developed to include training personnel throughout the organisation in fundamental safety concepts and principles.
It is very important that all people in our organisation understand and believe in the same concept, says Joe Botos, vice president for Environment, Health and Safety. It has been made possible by the intensive safety training executed by DNV staff all over the world for the past 25 years. In co-operation with DNV we have produced a training package based upon modern safety principles tailor-made to Cargill operations. In this way a consistent message has been communicated to all employees, which has been a major contributor to the safety success of our organisation.
Achieving control
One important element in Cargills safety training is to understand the factors that cause incidents, so that effective control measures can be implemented. By making use of the Loss Causation Model developed by the International Loss Control Institute (now a part of DNV), participants learn how to control the safety aspects of the operation by focusing on basic causes and management systems instead of on symptoms. Cargill has applied a strategic approach to the problem by controlling ongoing activities on a continuous basis. They are making use of the ISMEC principles, that is to say: Identifying work necessary to control loss, setting standards for leadership performance, measuring performance against those standards, evaluating performance, commending compliance and correcting deficiencies in performance standards.
At Port Cargill in Minnesota, five different business units dealing with fertiliser, salt and grain products operate in close proximity. The ISMEC principles have been practised at this location for years with great success. Over 100 employees are engaged in unloading, storing and distributing agricultural products, with over 300 trucks, cars and barges arriving each day. Last year Port Cargill spent $2M on improvements in the fertiliser unit to improve the safety aspects of the operation. A buddy system has been implemented in all five business units, in which everyone is watching out for each other to avoid potential risks in daily operations. Once a month all employees get together in safety meetings where current issues are discussed and new solutions put forward to old problems. A number of operations at Port Cargill involve repetitive and routine tasks. Job rotation is one of the measures being implemented to avoid incidents caused by routine-based operations.
We must make sure our employees see an ownership of what they do, says Botos. They have a right to refuse work if they consider it unsafe. It is the managements responsibility to open up communication and contribute to change if needed, even if production suffers. In this way the safety principles at Cargill enable the employees to control their own destiny, by involving everyone in managing their own operations in a safe and controllable way.