ANNnews – Bea Moreno, Juan M. Pellicer and Alberto Tejero – Health & Safety
16 December 2021
At Aernnova, Health & Safety (H&S) has always been worked aware of the importance of guaranteeing safaty of employees.
Aerometallic Tarazona wanted to share its experience in this area with us.
Towards the end of 2019, the management team questioned whether the H&S management carried out to date, was really the most suitable to be able to ensure the control of all the risks involved in our work activity. Certain changes that needed to be addressed were proposed, the difficulty and resistance that would undoubtedly arise were assessed and some milestones were defined, which have been implemented since then.
We talk to Bea Moreno (H&S Technician), Juan Miguel Pellicer (Member of the Works Committee) and Alberto Tejero (Shift Manager of Treatment).
Bea Moreno – H&S Technician
At the 0 Accidents Intervention Center you have the “sign” telling Leadership in H&S, and three pillars: Commitment, Compliance and Knowledge, what do they consist of?
It is our H&S management model we implement last year, in which the management committee, middle management and all the people have an active role in the day-to-day management, assuming their responsibility and exercising leadership. For us, the main meaning of leadership is to influence the way others think and act.
Does that mean that you want everyone to be a leader in H&S?
Yes, that is our vision and mission. To achieve that all the people who work at Aerometallic Tarazona exercise leadership in H&S, so that each person complies with preventive measures, detects hazards, communicates them, and corrects others when they observe that others are acting in an unsafe manner. Right now this means having 160 leaders in H&S.
This is a very ambitious vision, what changes have you made to achieve it?
Yes, it is. We started with the deployment of the job responsibilities handbook (MRH-00-001) that the group launched at the end of 2019. That document made us think about the way we had been working until then. Responsibilities were clear and defined but they were not assumed in many cases. We had a lot of collaboration from everyone, but not the necessary commitment. There is a big difference between collaboration and real commitment.
Basically, we started by changing my role as H&S Technician. Prevention fell on my shoulders, I had to pursue preventive programs with no guarantee of being able to control and guarantee safety because risks do not only occur in facilities or machines, and they are not controlled only with job evaluations and safe instructions. There are situations of risks and unsafe acts that must be controlled on site, in the production plant, by all the people, during the execution of the work, when changes arise, which must be controlled at the time.
That is why we have worked mainly with middle management, incorporating H&S as a priority in their daily work and helping them to assume the functions of leading, communicating, correcting, executing and preventing. We have also worked a lot with maintenance personnel, and the changes have been very noticeable, both in contract management and in the progress of the special H&S programs, which are now led by the maintenance manager.
We would also like to highlight the great work done by the warehouse team together with the engineering department, who have worked with H&S on the materials logistics, loading and unloading program. The instructions have been visibly expanded and improved to cover new parts with different sizes, and new trolleys and lifting tools have been designed to improve handling, taking into account ergonomic and preventive aspects.
And the management team has included new key indicators of Commitment, Compliance and Knowledge in its scorecard; each department head reports the H&S activity carried out in his or her department and evaluates the performance of all managers and technicians on a monthly basis.
It looks like it will require a lot of follow-up work. What results are you achiving?
It doesn’t mean working more than before, it means working in a different way. Each area is progressing little by little in the three pillars; it doesn’t happen overnight. There has been a very noticeable change in production and maintenance management, there is much greater awareness of safety, more interest and more knowledge. All this is noticeable, and there is a lot of effort on everyone’s part. When an incident occurs, it is demotivating because you think, why couldn’t we have avoided it?
Do you think all accidents can be avoided?
Yes, that is our goal and we must work to achieve it. Risks cannot be eliminated, they exist and will exist, but the accident somehow can be avoided, although sometimes situations occur where everything seems to be under control and even so, someone gets hurt or falls. The important thing is that with each person’s commitment, knowledge and compliance, nothing that could end up in an injury scape to us.
Juan Miguel Pellicer – Work Council and H&S Committee Member
What are your functions as a member of the H&S Committee?
As members of the health and safety committee, apart from having the official meetings required by law, compiling the information and H&S notices that the company gives us, in the treatment area we carry out the weekly audits together with the shift manager. The rest of the responsibilities are the same as those of any other colleague.
Have the weekly audits provide you with experience in some way?
A lot. I was unaware of these issues before. Theoretical training is very good, but having the opportunity to observe the entire plant as a whole, following a list of issues to be reviewed, now I know much better the risks involved, the importance of PPE (personal protective equipment), obstacle-free doors and emergencies, machine safety, I see the importance of having everything ready and correcting what is not right on time.
What changes do you observe in terms of prevention?
Nobody now thinks of handling a part without gloves, or working without goggles or without complying with safety measures, well, maybe someone is absent-minded, but in general there is more awareness of these issues. And the company has made significant improvements, there are more measures than years ago. I think progress has been made on both sides.
Would you stop a colleague who is not complying with the measures?
Yes, of course, I would tell them to put on his PPE, or stop doing that because it is not safe, I would explain why, and I would convince him that it is for his own good, people trust each other because we have done the same job many times, we believe that nothing is going to happen, and that’s when it does. The awareness of all is an issue that we must continue to insist. Accidents at work remind me a lot of traffic campaigns, in a second your life can change, and the important thing is to return home to your family safe and sound.
Alberto Tejero – Shift Manager of Treatment
As a production team leader managing a large team of 20 to 25 people, how did you deal with this change?
I believe that I have always collaborated in prevention, but it is true that at this moment, there is much more emphasis on these issues. It’s not only us who have changed, but also the management. Prevention issues are priority number one, we work on them every day, we have invested a lot of money and time in improvements in the factory and people generally appreciate that.
What do you do now that you didn’t do before?
Some prevention programs are now managed by the shift managers, with Bea’s help, but we lead them. For example, in the mobile equipment safety program, we keep the inventory and control of lifting equipment up to date; in the case of contractors, the areas are cordoned off, signs are put up with all the information about the contractor, such as the work to be done, the measures they must comply with, and we monitor the work when we pass through the intervention area to make sure that they also comply with what they have to do. We present the intervention center every month to our entire team and at the same time we call department heads so that they are the ones who later present this information to their teams.
Last year, in Treatments, we prepared what we call here the H&S Corner, where we work on prevention issues in each work area, preparation and painting, tanks and liquids, shot, storage, identification and review. There we work in smaller teams on the risk notifications that people submit, when they see risks or unsafe acts, we study them, we see how the action plans are going, those that are being closed and those that are still open. This is very important because when you ask people to collaborate, they must receive a response on each of the notifications and have an explanation of those that are not so easy to implement.
The plant audits are done by us with a member of the Health and Safety Committee. The deviations that we detect are corrected on the spot, since we are responsible for the corrective actions that are generated.
What has been the hardest or most difficult thing for you to do?
Communication in the intervention center. First, because I have to prepare myself for it, I have to understand well what Bea prepares for me. She masters it, it’s her area of expertise, it’s not mine. But little by little, I learn. Then public speaking is something that is difficult and there is always room for improvement.
How far are we from reaching the vision you have set for all your staff to be leaders in risk prevention?
We still have a long way to go, it is a long road, we are learning and our challenge is to get all the staff to be aware and to contribute ideas and knowledge in their daily work.
Now we look much more at prevention, before the attention was more focused on the parts, on the process, now we not only see that, but we observe how the person is processing that part and how the facilities are. Little by little it is becoming a regular routine, although we miss things. Shift managers can’t check on people all the time, that’s not possible. Therefore it is very important that people are able to stop, first themselves, or a colleague, if things are not being done safely. Sometimes you have to stop to think and ask questions.