Leadership, culture and behaviours
We believe that there is no compromise between safety and business success. In fact, we believe that the operations with the best safety performance are also our most innovative and successful and that safety performance is an important indicator of the quality of operational management. To ensure we operate our business in the safest possible way, we instil a strong safety culture at every level amongst our employees and contractors.
A culture of safety starts at the top of our organisation. For successful safety performance, senior leaders must visibly demonstrate their commitment through, for example, spending significant time in the field discussing safety and personally endorsing safety initiatives. Other fundamentals include:
- Continuous improvement in safety relies on a widespread learning culture in the organisation across all operations and all management levels – the ability to track and review the right leading indicators, spot early warning signs, and ensure lessons are truly learned and integrated into the day-to-day management processes so that repeat incidents are avoided;
- Employees and contractors to see safety as their individual responsibility: we encourage a no-blame culture where all those working for us feel empowered to challenge unsafe behaviours and report incidents, and are encouraged to share insights, concerns and improved practices; and
- Employees and contractors are provided with the tools and the training that allow them to recognise and mitigate the inherent hazards and risks that exist within a dynamic mining environment.
During 2010, our commodity businesses continued to promote further improvements in safety, typically through the initiative and personal commitment of the commodity business chief executives themselves. Xstrata Copper, for example, had our lowest injury rate but had noted a levelling off in performance. Under the initiative and direction of its chief executive, Xstrata Copper identified and implemented a number of targeted actions and programmes to break through the performance plateau. The SafeCoal Initiative launched by Xstrata Coal in 2010 (see case study) was initiated and led by that business’s chief executive, who gave a personal presentation in every region within the business to launch the programme and made quarterly visits to reinforce it.