At Domtar, we take safety seriously. Since 2007, we have reduced our recordable incident rate by 66 percent. Our safety journey is a testament to the strong leadership, engagement and focus demonstrated by all of Domtar’s nearly 10,000 colleagues worldwide who help ensure everyone has a safe day, every day.
“Safety is the most important aspect of how we work — every day, everywhere,” says Larry Warren, senior director of Health and Safety for the Pulp and Paper Division.
Both the Pulp and Paper and Personal Care divisions are making steady progress toward achieving the company-wide goal of a 0.5 recordable incident frequency rate by 2020, thanks to initiatives to use best practices and proper training to drive consistent behavior. We have seen a 21 percent decrease in recordable incidents since announcing that goal in 2015. Our safety journey is featured in our 2017 Sustainability Report.
Safety Depends on Processes and People
Domtar’s safety culture is founded on the idea of human performance improvement (HPI), which acknowledges that people are inherently fallible and they will make mistakes. However, HPI isn’t about fixing the worker; rather, it holds the entire organization accountable by understanding the context surrounding events and why individuals exhibited behaviors that lead to safety incidents.
Both individual actions and organizational weaknesses can result in unwanted outcomes. Therefore, HPI-based initiatives are proactive in nature. They focus on risk reduction and continuous improvement by implementing solutions to prevent errors that could lead to a negative outcome.
In 2015, safety teams identified eight operations across Pulp and Paper that had high potential for recordable incidents, and they began to develop standard operating procedures for each operation so that it’s done the same way at every site. Teams also implemented built-in measures to track process effectiveness and regular checkpoints to evaluate and address process deviations.
Since Domtar adopted HPI five years ago, more than 350 Personal Care division leaders have been HPI trained. In addition to a global safety council — a cross-functional team responsible for guiding Personal Care on its safety journey — each plant has its own hazard reduction team to identify and mitigate risks by raising housekeeping standards, creating detailed hazard maps and conducting thorough investigations when incidents occur.
“Safety programs are designed to engage, equip and execute through leadership training, tools, guidance and global systems,” says Kirk Bagnal, Personal Care’s global safety council chair and environment, health and safety director.
more detail at: https://newsroom.domtar.com/leadership-engagement-safety-journey/