JOMC

Pilkington's mission is to be the global leader in the manufacture and supply of glass products, through the best use of its people, technology and its pursuit of innovation. This is well demonstrated in its commitment to employee health and safety, and its introduction and development of behavioural safety.

The UK (Building Products) was the first region to initiate behavioural safety which started in the operations sites in March 1998 and then into the branch network in 2004. Since that time it has been introduced across most parts of Europe as a culture change process using safety as the driver.

Pilkington felt that a successful behavioural safety programme be strategically led, with an opportunity for employee involvement, not too academic in its delivery and without the need for large amounts of data to be collected. Working closely with JOMC a four stage programme was devised:

1. HSE Climate Survey
2. Managers Culture Change Workshop
3. Workteam Culture Change Workshop
4. Job Observation (SUSA)

The identification of Key Safe Behaviours (KSBs) to guide the SUSA observers and also to inform the workteams safe way of working was important. These KSBs were arrived at from an analysis of accident types and causation, and a simple question being asked for each type and cause.

"What simple visible behaviour if followed would prevent or contribute to eliminating the injury or accident?"

In conducting a SUSA observation and during the discussion process praise would be given for following Key Safe Behaviours observed and a non-confrontational discussion to establish the root cause of not observing the Key Safe Behaviours, usually culminating in a commitment for further action by the individual. The idea that a small number of behaviours lead to the majority of our accident experience was well received.

The JOMC behavioural safety process in Pilkington UK Manufacturing promised to deliver a 50% reduction in lost time accidents; this was achieved within 18 months of the start of the roll out. The results of Pilkington's commitment to improving safety and the concepts embedded in the JOMC process are evident with behavioural safety being used directly and indirectly to drive safety improvement with some notable successes:

• 92% improvement in Lost Time Accident Rate from 3.7% to 0.3% in the UK
• 80% improvement in Lost Time Accident Rate from 2.6% to 0.5% in the European Operations.
• 79% improvement in Lost Time Accident Rate from 10% to 2.1% for the European Branches.

To sustain the improvement and to complete the behavioural and cultural transformation Pilkington has continued to work on hard on communicating and developing key elements of the JOMC behavioural safety programme and innovating additional activities over time.

Pilkington has been asked to present at a number of external conferences on Behavioural Safety in the last 5 years, it has organised and hosted two Behavioural Safety User Conferences and hosted a number of visits from individual companies wishing to learn from our experience in changing safety behaviour. With ten years of experience and an on-going partnership with JOMC Pilkington has become an industry leader in behavioural safety and is both living its mission statement and honouring its commitment to its employees.

This case study was developed in partnership with Pilkington NSG.

Download this case study (.pdf)