The Frantschach Mill celebrates a new safety performance milestone

On 19 August 2009, Mondi Frantschach celebrated 365 working days without a lost-time injury (LTI). Their achievement is one that Mondi is aiming to replicate throughout the company.

All people at the Frantschach mill received a Safety First" shirt as a token to celebrate the event.

The challenge

Mondi Frantschach is a Kraft mill in southern Austria where, due to the nature of the process, hazards exist in the working environment. Until 2005, the mill delivered continuous improvements in its safety performance, but since then little further progress has been made. The mill team raised the question of how they could minimise this variability in performance and, more importantly, why it was occurring in the first place.

The team established that the reason for this variable accident cycle was that cultural and feedback mechanisms were not securely in place. When implementation varies, the ultimate success rests with individual ownership. The critical challenge for managers, to engage, align and sustain employee involvement in maintaining a safe working culture, not only as a set of words but as an integral part of its teams’ mindset, was only fully met in 2007.

1) LTI: Lost-time injury; any occupational injury which renders the person unable to perform his/her regular duties for one full shift or more following the day on which the injury was incurred, whether a scheduled work day or not. 2) LTIFR: Lost-time injury frequency rate; the number of lost-time injuries per 200,000 man hours worked.

The solution

The current improved safety performance can be attributed to the following activities initiated by the Frantschach team in early 2008:

• Encouraging ownership
  Once alignment is achieved, an injury-free culture must be promoted and ownership taken for safety outcomes and systems, conditions, processes and practices that create those results. The Frantschach management team decided to revise the mill’s safety enabling systems and ensure their effectiveness through OHSAS 18001. This process was supported by the implementation of the Allgemeine Unfallversicherungsanstalt - Sicherheits und Gesundheitsmanagement, [Austrian General Accident Insurance Institute - Safety and Health Management], (AUVA-SGM) system in 2008, and is a first for the Austrian paper industry. Key contributing factors include revisions to routine safety training, introduction of a weekly safety theme, implementation of a formal health management system (fit for life programme) and the provision of a well accepted, integrated safety health and environmental software.
  
• Influencing behaviour
  The management team realised that safety is about walking the talk. The more the mill succeeded in moving towards an injury-free culture, the more optimism and enthusiasm was expressed about the ability to influence safety. Improvements are driven by behavioural safety auditing, daily supervisory safety talks and constant vigilance for unsafe conditions and at-risk behaviour. Initially, this approach was supported by specific skills training for supervisors, to recognise and correct unconsciously unsafe behaviour. Peer-to-peer observations have started and, in conjunction with the conscientious reporting of close calls, they indicate the maturing of the safety culture at the mill.

The outcome

When analysing past performance, the management realised that it was their responsibility to establish and maintain systems that consistently produce safe behaviour. In the past, only a few people had been charged with the responsibility for safety. The new formal structure for continuous safety improvement, with more people taking responsibility for safety and keeping their eye on the ball, helped to develop the safety climate that underpinned the improvement in lost time injury-free performance.

Mondi Frantschach thrives on a safety culture and its attributes of trust, communication, and credibility have enabled and maintained these systems.

Safety leadership, recognition and reward of good performance rather than the punishment of at-risk behaviour, encourages safe behaviour.

Last change: 25.03.2010