NRSPP Steering Committee Partner, Origin Energy, has made a dramatic impact on its business injury rate in 2013-14 with a 23 per cent improvement on Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate. The most significant achievement came from the LPG business where a concerted focus on leadership, risk reduction and staff involvement resulting in a 33 per cent overall reduction in injuries and almost three consecutive months without a recordable injury.
The LPG business has attributed this achievement to journey management plans to identify and control risks on high-risk routes; introduced GPS-based in-vehicle monitoring systems (IVMS) across the bulk, cylinder and smaller trucks; and a cultural transformation program where employees take ownership for safety themselves and their colleagues.
The business unit has found encouragingly over the past twelve months, motor vehicle accidents in LPG have reduced by more than 50 per cent.
The introduction of IVMS system in particular captures real time data about drivers and vehicles, and monitors it against a set of safety measures. As well as being able to provide quick response in driver emergencies, IVMS provides crucial data to identify causes of vehicle accidents and reward good driving behaviours to help stop accidents occurring.
The cultural transformation program called Blue Bus was also introduced at over 30 LPG sites and encourages employee’s to display increased ownership of safety. That ownership is increasingly being demonstrated across the business, with employees speaking up to use their “authority to stop an unsafe task”, make a record number of behavioural safety observations, and drive improvements in their local processes and procedures.
The leader of Origin’s LPG business, Andrew Bills, says that there is still some way to go and the business will continue to apply the combined focus on leadership, risk reduction and staff involvement.
Priorities for the next twelve months include improving the capability of front line leaders, increasing their scrutiny of safety incidents and audits to ensure they capture the learnings from every mistake and simplifying and standardising processes and equipment.
The Big Picture for Origin
Origin’s workforce includes approximately 6,700 employees and several thousand contractors, the majority of whom are based in Australia.2013-14 saw no fatalities for Origin Energy.
Origin recognises that its employees and contractors require a safe and healthy workplace, fair and equitable remuneration. To ensure its employees are all heard and their feedback listened to Origin conducts twice yearly employee roadshows held by either the Managing Director or other senior executives in major office locations
For Origin’s field employees, we favour face-to-face communication such as “toolbox talks” and visits from senior leaders. A twice yearly formal performance management process for all employees ensures roles are clear, skills are developed and opportunities provided.
Leading Indicators – how to get your employees behaviour on side
Safety observations help Origin Energy to recognise safe behaviours and identify unsafe ones. Observations are the organisations leading indicator of safety performance, which is why since 2012 Origin has linked its performance on recording observations to an Employee Share Plan.
If the organisation meets or exceed our annual observations target, the Board will award each eligible employee with up to $1,000 worth of Origin shares.
In FY 2014, our employees made 70,688 closed observations, well in excess of our target of 45,000.
Reported observations covered diverse safety topics including behaviours that contribute to process safety, hand injuries, motor vehicles, risks associated with manual handling in the office, and recognising colleagues who model safe work practices.
Safety performance in FY 2014 reflects our continued focus on promoting safe work practices and reinforcing our safety culture throughout the business. Company-wide safety targets mean that everyone is involved in safety,
The Results
Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR), a measure of success in reducing work-related injuries recorded a TRIFR of 5.0, a 23 per cent improvement on our previous year of 6.5 and well ahead of target of 6.0 which is illustrated below.
This year there were no fatalities associated with our activities. Aligns with Origins ultimate aspiration of a zero-harm workplace where the total hours worked has continued to grow.
There were 39 lost time cases and a total of 615 days of work lost, equating to a lost time severity rate of 16.7 (total days of lost time case per million hours worked). This represents an improvement of 9 per cent over the previous year’s result of 18.4.
Lost time cases to track the severity of injuries occurring to our people. This involves measuring the number of injuries resulting in an employee missing at least one full shift or work day
2015 Targets
Origin wants to continue its improve and to facilitate this, the Board has endorsed the following Origin-wide targets for the year:
- TRIFR of 4.5;
- 45,000 closed observations; and
- closed actions – to have 80 per cent of our HSE actions completed by the original due date.