29/04/2021
The Health & Safety Webmeeting took place in end of April with around 30 participants from all member countries. Our speaker was Mr. Sippel, Health & Safety Manager and expert at Tata Steel.
The focus was on behaviour-related accidents. They amount to about 85 per cent of all accidents according to the presentation. With his long and deep experience in health & safety Mr. Sippel gave an answer to the question why despite lots of efforts in technical measures or safety traning a relatively high amount of accidents still happen.
The challenge is to implement a culture of safety awareness among the employees. And this takes time. It is nothing which happen overnight, it is rather a process of years or even decades. Nevertheless it is absolutely necessary to tackle this issue in every company. The safety of employees is one of the management’s top responsibility and should have priority number one (also in all meetings)! The reason for behaviour-related accidents can often be found in poor leadership finds Mr. Sippel. Good and trained leaders which have a role model function are required on all levels. Mr. Sippel advocates a ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy in companies. Never look away and seek the dialogue with your employees, this should be the maxim for leadership.
He explained several tools which can be used to push this aspects forward. For example he explains the importance of regular Positive Safety Conversations, of Safety Management Tours and of a Near Misses Reporting System. To implement such routines and processes he hands out some concrete checklists and formulars which were distributed to all. Moreover, he presents a so-called Culture Assessment Tool which can be used to evaluate where the respective company stands regarding health & safety. Also a 2-minutes risk card can be helpful in everyday processes. This card in the size of a playing card gives the employee an answer whether a task can be carried out safely or not.
At the end we had an interesting discussion about conractors’ safety and about a standard or code of practice for coil banding used in Mr. Sippel’s company.
If you need more information about this aspects or the documents mentioned do not hesitate to contact us.