Safe to Work sat down with Yancoal Australia head of training Craig Hagan to discuss how mine operators can implement a culture of safety excellence.
Yancoal Australia rolled out its ‘Safe way every day’ program in 2019, adopting a human-centric approach to workplace safety. And the positive results have been clear.
Since the program’s implementation, the coal giant has enjoyed a 31 per cent reduction in total injuries, as well as a 37 per cent decrease in days lost to injuries.
Craig Hagan, Yancoal Australia head of training and safety culture, is the man at the helm of the company-wide program. He prudently likens his experience developing a culture of safety to the up-and-down nature of a game of snakes and ladders.
“If you’ve got the right processes and framework in place, your company will continue to climb the ladder towards a culture of excellence, but there will be things that happen along the way that may disrupt that journey,” Hagan told Safe to Work.
“That could be a change in management, a change in legislation, or a significant incident; these are the snakes that you can land on, and they can all have an impact on where your safety culture sits at any point in time.
“But the key is having a robust cultural system in place, so that when you land on a snake, you know how to keep climbing upwards.
“Without the right framework in place, a lot of organisations hit a snake and then everything falls apart.”
Hagan’s work in driving safety culture at Yancoal supported him being named the ‘Safety Advocate’ and ‘Project Lead’ of the year at the 2023 Australian Mining Prospect Awards. Suffice it to say, his words bear weight when it comes to training and workplace culture.
So how does a mining company begin the climb towards a culture of safety? If you ask Hagan, it starts with knowing the data.
“The most important thing is to understand why your incidents are happening and how they relate to human-factor elements,” he said.
“Having that kind of operational knowledge will allow you to build your framework around it.”
When Yancoal examined its own data, the company found that 85 per cent of incident root causes of safety incidents were related to an element of human behaviour, such as rushing, taking a short cut or a loss of concentration.
Despite the implementation of comprehensive layers of risk assessment, governance and supervision, a persistent theme emerged: inconsistent individual behaviour often led to incidents.
“As humans, we’re often prone to trying a different approach – to taking a short cut and deviating from the norm – and if we do that enough times in a row and get away with it, we actually create a new neurological pathway where that behaviour becomes a natural occurrence,” Hagan said.
While there is a role for rigorous, legally compliant, up-to-date safety procedures on a mine site, part of the journey towards a culture of safety involves empowering employees to recognise the significant impact of human behaviour, and the ability to normalise risk, on their decision-making processes.
‘Safe way every day’ tackles this situation with a coaching approach, where every individual is empowered to speak out if they feel unsafe, or see something unsafe, on-site. This allows employees to keep themselves and others in check without fear of speaking out.
At an operational level, Yancoal has implemented ‘12 safe way behaviours’:
- I will always stop the job if I feel it is unsafe or I am unsure of the safe way to perform the work activity
- I will always consider health, safety and wellbeing when planning work
- I will always attend fit and healthy for work, both physically and mentally
- I will only operate vehicles, plant and equipment for which I am trained and authorised
- I will always complete pre-start checks before operating any mobile plant, equipment or machinery
- I will always follow mine site traffic rules and vehicle operation requirements
- I will always use safety or protection devices and never remove, bypass or interfere with them
- I will always establish effective isolation and verification when working on plant or equipment
- I will always remove my hands and body from the potential line of fire or risk exposure
- I will never lift a load over any person or enter under a suspended load
- I will never enter a no-go or exclusion zone
- I will never use a mobile device while operating plant and equipment or when in a designated operations area unless instructed.
“People can get into a false sense of confidence when it comes to risk-taking behaviour and, after long enough, not realise that they have created bad habits,” Hagan said.
“Unless you’ve got that peer support, and unless you’ve got that confidence in a no-fear leadership process where people can put their hand up and say, ‘hang on a minute, I might have lost my way’, then you’ll end up seeing a higher numbers of incidents.
“As humans, we’re all subject to making mistakes, and having that better peer support network allows someone else to be able to keep an eye on us when we’re conducting high-risk tasks.”
‘Safe way every day’ has taken safety at Yancoal to new heights. The company has not only experienced significantly fewer incidents, but has increased incident reporting by 32 per cent and achieved a 96 per cent positive safety feedback rating from its employees.
But a change like this doesn’t come about overnight – it’s the result of years of dedication and determination from the whole Yancoal team.
“The key thing is that when you start down this path, you have to be committed to implementing a long-term operating model change,” Hagan said.
“There will be ups and downs, but you have to commit to the cultural framework and maintain that energy as an integral part of the business model going forward.
“There is a fixed mindset that when people go to work, safety is the responsibility of the company.
“What we’re teaching people is that safety is a shared responsibility and, in actual fact, we’re all safety leaders, regardless of our role in the business.”
This feature also appears in the July-August issue of Safe to Work.