The practice of safety as a culture – workplace accident prevention

In fiscal year 2021/22, the number of workplace accidents at Materials Services worldwide was reduced to 1.4 per million hours worked. How was that achieved?

The important thing is that everyone joins in and understands what we’re doing – whether it’s our employees working at the machines every day or our OSH experts fulfilling their responsibilities. But management personnel play a major role as well. They have to convey this understanding to their team members and serve as role models. We can only achieve that by involving all levels of the company. By listening to where hidden dangers may lurk, and by taking up ideas from our plants for discussion by our experts. Only in this way can everyone be convinced of the measures and say: “That makes sense. Let’s put it into practice together.”

How do you translate that into concrete measures for everyday work?

It’s about involving all our employees in the joint ongoing development of our safety culture. That begins with daily offerings and discussions. Like our Daily Safety Talk, where the employees look at the shift they’re about to begin and answer the questions: “What’s on the schedule today? Where are potential risks? What do we need to discuss?” After all, any given day can hold possible hazards. If I’ve operated the same machine for 10 years, for example, I might settle into the feeling that I’ve got everything under control – that the machine is my friend. That’s especially important right now, given our recent success. Such low accident figures can bring a false sense of security. But the actual risk of injury is the same every day – so we can’t let our alertness drop off.

Apropos maintaining alertness: how do you communicate that internally?

We have to make clear to our employees that it can happen to anybody. That means we have to reach our staff on an emotional level and do more than put up posters or hand out flyers. We regularly address work safety for our employees via our internal channels, and we incorporate various perspectives. For example, our colleague Nico Schmidinger, who suffered a serious hand injury, gave a very personal report on his accident in a video. That affects the viewers directly and shows them that no one is immune. We’ve also launched a training series titled “RiskBuster@MX.” In video clips, the former stuntman Holger Schumacher illustrates various everyday work situations of industrial employees which bear certain risks and where accidents can happen. At our locations, we work with team-oriented dialogue formats like the “Safety Talk & Walk.” We shine a light on hazards in our plants, go through work procedures, and discuss accident potentials together. By utilizing various formats, we can sensitize our employees at all levels to dangers – and encourage them to always take care of themselves and others. 

How would you describe that approach? What has to happen in the background to enable the strategic implementation of the measures?

A precise analysis of the accidents forms the technical foundation, and coherent organization provides the underlying structure. To be able to work in a goal-oriented way, you have to ensure a regular exchange with OSH experts at all locations, and the accident hot spots must be clear. We see the greatest dangers in three areas: material handling equipment like forklifts; hand and arm injuries that occur while operating machines or handling materials; and suspended loads when goods are being transported. On this basis, we’ve launched initiatives and developed targeted measures.