January 2012 Newsletter
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| Welcome to the January
2012 issue of Xmo Strata's online newsletter. To view a story, please click on the relevant headline below. For further information on any of the stories featured, please contact us or visit http://www.xmostrata.com/ Content
Health and safety day The health and safety nitty gritty Stress management Learning styles The Dragon's Den Safety recognition A positive outcome Forecourt Safety Award APEA award win In other news.... Health and safety day
Activities involved a candid and in-depth analysis of the company's own health and safety record for the past 12 months with an emphasis on shortcomings and areas for improvement. “This is a pretty significant investment for a company, not just in terms of the outright cost but the opportunity loss involved in taking all its revenue-earners off the road for a day,” said Managing Director Steve Martin. “For us, however, and I know for several other companies who run similar events, it is a worthwhile investment which always generates positive outcomes.”
The health and safety nitty gritty
Last year, for comparison, there were no fatalities, one minor injury, no First Aid injuries, six incidents of property damage and 305 non-injury incidents. Employees and customers contributed to a detailed discussion about why non injury incident reporting had reduced and the ramifications of the work patterns changing from predominantly live dealer sites to closed, well-managed company owned sites, run by professional principal contractors. The company also brought-in external health and safety consultancy SMTS to conduct health and safety audits on 15 crews. The objective was to benchmark the scoring on the company's in-house health and safety audits.
The extrapolated results showed that crews were scoring 94.2% when marked by SMTS and 90.7% when marked under the in-house system. “The conclusion is that our own in-house audits are tougher than those conducted by a respected specialist consultancy. This was an interesting exercise for us and we certainly learned from it,” said Managing Director, Steve Martin. “That's actually the way we would want it. The point is to prevent injury and death, not to generate some artificially high score for cosmetic presentation purposes.”
Stress management
Operations Director, Kate Parmentier, presented the session and said that stress came in many different forms but could loosely be defined as the point at which workload exceeds capacity and/or ability. She emphasised that some stress was good - but that undue stress levels led to increased risk and workplace accidents. She outlined the company's new policy on stress and detailed aspects of the service now available to employees. Learning styles Xmo Strata spends a lot of money on high quality, professional video - and it has historically done so not for promotional and marketing purposes but for education in health and safety. Most of the films are available on the company's video vault on the website (http://www.xmostrata.com/videos/index.php) and range from short films to support toolbox talks through to 15-minute documentary-style films on more complex topics such as MID sign replacements. But why does the company do this? Why not simply issue written information on these topics - which would be significantly cheaper? “We do spend quite a lot of money on this,” said Managing Director, Steve Martin. “I know that some people must wonder why. This session was all about explaining that.” It's all to do with learning styles - the way we all acquire, absorb, understand and retain information. To explain it there was a presentation on learning styles and on the four key types of learning styles - activists, reflectors, theorists and pragmatists. All of us will favour one of these styles. In any company - including Xmo Strata - there will be people who favour each of the four styles.
“At Xmo Strata we try to present important information in numerous different ways - through toolbox talks, the health and safety day (including competitions, quizzes and games), health and safety bulletins (with detailed technical information) and the newsletter (written in a less formal and more relaxed style). “But we also use video. No system is perfect, but the ‘television generation’ is extremely good at absorbing information off a TV screen - and we'll use whatever works.”
Steve told guests that he would commit to financing the winning video idea. The brief was to produce ideas and concepts for a simple video (lasting no more than two minutes) to be used in support of a toolbox talk - and the knife and glove safety video was used as an example. In this video, no people are seen ‘full shot’, all the shooting took place in one location (which reduced costs), and there was no need to present a narrative. It was cost effective, easy to shoot and edit, and addressed a real and genuine issue. Several strong ideas emerged - and the company immediately committed to doing not one, but three toolbox talk videos based on ideas pitched to the Dragons. The videos won't necessarily follow the creative proposals laid out by the teams - professional video producers will adapt the ideas to suit a budget; but individual team members may be invited to join the “production team” during shooting, which will happen fairly soon.
Safety recognition Several Xmo Strata employees were recognised in the company's internal 2012 Safety Recognition Awards. Most improved safety reporting:
Dan Aberdeen (left) and Carl Vaughan (right).
Award presented by Paul Suchodolski, Health & Safety
Compliance Manager of Snax 24. Best safety documentation: Chip
Sparrowhawk (right) and Shane Kneller (left). Award presented
by Mark Day, Shell Project Director of Artelia. Positive intervention: Steve
Knights (left). Award presented by Michael Hunt, UK HSSE
Manager of Shell. Most enthusiastic approach to safety:
Mark Horn (centre). Award presented by Jeff
Woodward, BP Oil UK Country Manager of Bovis Lend
Lease. “We always try to showcase the best examples of good health and safety practice in our own company,” said Xmo Operations Director, Kate Parmentier. “It's not just a question of rewarding the people concerned, though that's obviously important - it's also about making it clear that we expect everyone to reach these standards, and setting a target for people to aim for.”
A positive outcome
An important outcome of this year's health and safety event is the XmoMan Health and Safety data management system - which stores much of the data collected by Xmo Strata on health and safety matters - being updated to accommodate a ‘positive intervention’ module. The update resulted from comments made by guests at the event and will allow the company to capture data on ‘positive intervention’ in the same way that it collects data on incidents mitigated at source.
Forecourt Safety Award
In 2011 the company launched a UK-wide award scheme open to any companies owning or working on fuel forecourts. The competition carried a £1,000 cash prize to use as the winner sees fit and invites for entry into the scheme were sent to some of Xmo Strata's competitors, in-line with the company's view that health and safety is not a competitive issue and that good practice should be celebrated and shared as widely as possible. Entrants were required to show that they had developed safer ways of completing jobs, raised awareness of dangers in the workplace, suggested new ways to communicate dangers to colleagues, customers or other contractors, or perhaps that they had suggested or implemented improvements to site documentation for more comprehensive safety checks or site audits. Above all, the judging panel were simply looking for people who had improved forecourt safety - and they had no difficulty in finding such people. Runners up
The judges commended the initiative as “well thought out”, “simple”, and drew attention to his “effective use of technology and experience”; they also commented on the clear, comprehensive and yet concisely presented supporting evidence in his entry.
The judges said the idea was cost-effective, easy to implement, carried both operational and behavioural benefits, encouraged consistency and showed great commitment by Paul himself. The winner The winner was Faisal Rana of United Petroleum - a forecourt operator managing several Shell sites in the North of England - whose entry included a sustained health and safety information campaign covering ideas, systems, processes and thoughts, communicated to employees by a mixture of formal presentations and written material. Collectively, the programme is known as The Goal Zero Initiative. The judges praised the fact that so many stakeholders were involved, and commented on the potential for wider community involvement, on the innovation and safety leadership built-in to the programme, on the calibre of supporting evidence provided with the entry and on Faisal's “passion” for health and safety. The programme was described as “unique from a dealer perspective” and Faisal himself was singled out as “an HSSE champion and leader”. Xmo Strata Managing Director Steve Martin said: “I was really pleased - we needed strong and credible entries to get this award off the ground and we received them, but I don't think we could have asked for a worthier winner. “This guy deserves so much respect for his attitude, his diligence, the ‘smart’ thinking that has gone into this, and for the results he has achieved. We can all learn things from people like this, and more than anything else, that's what the award is about.” Details of next year's award will be announced early in the first quarter of 2012.
The judging panel Xmo Strata Managing Director Steve Martin chaired the judging panel - but didn't have a vote. The other judges were:
Mr Moody took no part in the discussion about the entry Gilbarco Veeder-Root employee, Paul Picano, submitted. Who was there? Our VIP guests!
APEA award win
The judges commented on the company's ‘unswerving commitment to behavioural change’ not only for the benefit of their own employees, but for the benefit of everyone working in the forecourt industry. Xmo Strata's ‘sharing the no blame’ culture approach encouraged diligent accident reporting and led to honest and open sharing of information. The award was presented in front of 600 forecourt owners (oil, retail, group and individual owners), product / service suppliers, engineers, contractors, regulators and H&S executives. The judges were impressed by the level of involvement in health and safety initiatives by employees and by the fact that the company runs an industry-wide Forecourt Safety Award, open even to competitors. Xmo Strata Managing Director, Steve Martin, said: “Safety is a core business issue for us, as most people in the industry know, and like everyone else we occasionally make mistakes. When we do, the thing is to learn from them, and if possible, to help others by passing on precisely what it is we learnt. “I congratulate APEA on running such an important and widely recognised awards programme and thank Xmo Strata's staff, and the many people throughout the industry from other organisations, who work with us towards a safer environment.” Sponsored by Fairbanks, the APEA Awards is growing year-on-year, in terms of stature, significance and popularity. The 2011 winners and finalists have demonstrated excellence in raising industry standards over the past 12 months and have proven themselves worthy front-runners within the pool of specialist brands from the petroleum sector, which makes up APEA's influential community. The awards marked the final instalment of ‘APEA Live’, the association's showpiece event. The event incorporates a specialist exhibition, conference (sponsored by Franklin Fueling Systems) and awards dinner.
In other news....
Winter weather As the first of the snow to cover significant parts of the UK hit on December 16, 2011, the company issued a health and safety bulletin giving details of the forecast at that point and reminding employees about winter working rules. The bulletin advised: “When carrying out your Last Minute Risk Assessments (LMRA) always be aware of the weather conditions and monitor the conditions throughout the job. Stop work if the conditions cause significant loss of visibility or cause surfaces to be dangerously slippery. Always check the wind speed before working at height.”
The company will continue to issue timely bulletins on relevant weather-related issues throughout the winter, and they are available not just to Xmo Strata employees, but to anyone with an interest in the topic. All health and safety bulletins are available on the company's website at http://www.xmostrata.com/health/bulletin-list_11.php
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