Marry SAFETY; Divorce NEGLIGENCY!

“Safety is not a gadget, but a state of mind.” – Eleanor Everett.

I do agree with the Eleanor Everett's above quote and I firmly believe that as safety is an habit, a state of mind, standard of safety can be improved with the change in our mindset and the habit.

So, here I’m not going to tell anything about the accident statistics or safety status prevailing in the mines, rather I’ll like to deliberate on how work space safety can be improved by changing some of our habits along with compliance of the provisions of the statutes given in Mine safety legislation.

To make it easy to understand, I would like to just deduce the meaning of this six-letter word ‘Safety’ in my own way, by explaining the significance of each letter from which this Safety word has been formed:

S – Safety Management Plan (SMP)

A - Awareness

F – Facts Finding

E - Ecosystem

T – Technology, Tools & Techniques

Y – Your Will

Safety Management Plan (SMP): 

For ensuring safety in Mines, it’s crucial that all the mines have their own Safety Management Plan, which have been duly prepared by assessing all the associated risks prevailing in those mines along with their mitigative measures. Further, just one time preparation of SMP will not suffice, rather safety audit needs to be done every year or whenever some changes occur in the machines, methods, technology, infrastructure, etc. Fresh risk assessment of the changed activities must be done as soon as changes are brought so that all the risks are taken care of properly while doing mining. Further, conducting of Safety Audit of mines by multi-disciplinary Safety Audit teams shall be a better way to judge upon the loopholes prevailing in the mines.

However, I think SMPs are already implemented in all the mines of SECL, and we also do Safety Audit of all our Mines every year.

Nevertheless, many at times it happens that the observations of the safety audits are not being complied timely, which should not happen. I firmly believe that if SMPs are properly prepared and implemented, giving due care on the criteria which are essential for success of an SMP, half battle is already won.

Awareness:

Safety Awareness among each employee is of utmost importance. Awareness can be brought by several means like safety drive/campaign, public address system, Text, or video messaging, etc. It’s said that strategic messaging/drives elevates resonance. Whenever we go for any kind of awareness campaign, it’s important that it resonates with the audience i.e., people working in the mines. This should also not be one-sided, rather for success of any awareness campaign, it’s vital that we resonate with them, and they resonate with us. However, to create that level of resonance, our message/awareness campaign must match with the people working in the mines. The drive/message should match in terms of many things such as what are our top priorities, what are the most important things in developing a safety cult culture, etc. Further, to match the people we must also understand what their communication styles are and what are the vernacular language which they understand well. To make the awareness campaign successful, it’s important that the campaign is run/implemented in the communication style and language in which the majority of the workers of the mines are comfortable.

Moreover, to resonate with the people of the mines, it’s also important that we understand correctly what the level of awareness they already have about the situation and what additional awareness they need to inculcate to eliminate any kind of untoward accident/incident. It’s also important to know that are they aware about the problem(s) we have at hand? are they aware about the issues which we are trying to address? Do we have the right diagnosis? Are we in the same page of the diagnosis and the mitigative measures which are supposed to be taken to improve the safety standards? Are we all aware about the solutions? Are we aware that the solutions on which we have arrived are win-win for all? Are we aware that which solutions might be the best fit for our conditions or our value structure? In totality, we all must have complete awareness about the entire contextual features of our situation, then only we would be able to address the issues. This is perhaps most important part in creating resonance with all the people working in the mines.

Facts Finding:

Winston S. Churchill had once said that ‘’there is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away’, and this is very true everywhere. Confronting the brutal facts is vital for bringing improvement in anything. Facts are better than dreams. We all dream for achieving the highest standard of production & safety in mines. There is nothing wrong with pursuing such kind of vision. But it’s equally important that we correctly know the reality that where we are presently and where we want to go. Then only we can continually refine the path to achieve the highest standard of safety in mines. It’s important that we create an environment where the truth is heard, and the brutal facts confronted. There is huge difference between the opportunity to ‘have our say’ and opportunity ‘to be heard’. Creating a culture wherein people have tremendous opportunity to be heard, is one of the prime requisites for enhancing safety in the mines.

However, to foster highest level of safety standards in mines, we must also keep unwavering faith amid the brutal facts. For bringing improvement, it’s important that we know both our weakness as well our strength, so that we can use our strength to eliminate our weakness.

Ecosystem:

It’s a fact that a sound ecosystem elevates adaptability. To foster safety in mines, we must have to understand the values, norms and beliefs of the employees working in the mines. We must understand what are the behaviours which are desired for making the working space safe and what behaviours the employees are actually possessing. Accordingly, the ecosystem needs to be developed where people willingly come forward to change their behaviours in line with the desired behavior.

Further, as we work in the industry where trade unions and other pressure groups play a major role, both in ensuring safety and production enhancement, there must be strong collaboration with all of them. We the management must possess collaborative mindset to achieve consensus on the activities which we do for increasing safety and production of the mines. Collaborative mindset is looking for common grounds and finding out win-win solution for all the concerned stakeholders so that all can work together closely and naturally. The collaborative mindset is the best way to create consensus, because when we create that consensus, the other parties that we are working alongside can really get a sense that we all are there for each other.

This is the very reason that Mission MITWA (Motivated & Inspired Team and Work Agency) has been launched in SECL, whose basic purpose is ‘Upgradation of Safety Work Culture in SECL through mutual coordination between the three pillars of the organization, namely ‘Management’, the ‘Trade Unions’ and the ‘Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS)’. Its genesis is the great example of keeping collaborative mindset to find the best solution of the safety issues.

Technology, Tools & Techniques:

Presently, the whole world is going through digital transition and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and India is not an exception. The digital transformation & the generative AI can be used advantageously in our mines to eliminate/reduce accidents. In mines, where the geological conditions are not favorable and risks are high, we can go for extraction by remote controlled machines, as we are doing in Continuous Miners, Highwall and Longwall method of mining. Such methods can be extended in others mines where the risk is even moderate.

Digitalization is another tool, which can greatly enhance our safety standards in mines. With digitalization, not only the manual activities get reduced but monitoring and getting earlier warning becomes easy.

Moreover, with the use of recent safer and efficient technologies, tools and techniques, we can greatly enhance our safety standards in our working places.

Your Will:

‘Willpower is nothing but willingness to do’. Even if we get all the aforesaid five things in place, i.e., SMP, Awareness, Facts, Ecosystem, Technology Tools & Techniques; but if we lack in the willpower, all the other things will become futile. There is no use of the above five things if we don’t have willpower to establish state of the art safety standards in our mines. Further, this willpower should be from top up to the bottom, as safety is not the responsibility of only one person but it’s the responsibility of the collective whole.

Steve Job in one of his acclaimed speeches had said that "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do’’.

So, willingness along with loving the job which we do is one of the prime necessities to bring long-term impact and bring change in the system. If we want to bring significant impact on safety front, this is much more required than any other parameters.

Safety is word which is not only related with external injuries or accidents but it’s also very much related with health and hygiene of workers working in the mines. Providing healthy and hygienic working environment is one of our prime responsibilities and we all must endeavor honestly to provide the same. And it’s worth sharing that Mission SuDESHH (Sustainable Development Environment Safety Health & Hygiene) has been launched by CMD, SECL for this very purpose i.e. for upgrading Occupational Safety Health & Environment.

We all are entitled to health and safety. Being safe and healthy is the right of everyone and we all must respect and try to ensure it in true spirit, wherever, we are working. Every accident or occurrence of some health issues at the workplace is a notice that something is wrong with men, methods, or material and that must be properly investigated and corrected timely. Any missed chance is a disaster in waiting. So why to take risks and why not just adhere to the rule of law. In this stride, formulation and compliance of Site-specific Risk Assessment based Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) can be a welcome step.

An innovative step may be to organize “Safety Check Hunt” in line with “Treasure Hunt” in adjacent mines to find faults in Mine Safety. The team that finds most faults in a set time wins and the mine with least faults wins.

An organization has a hierarchy and work distribution based on one’s functional domain, many teams working in various functional domains and in various hierarchies operate together to make the system running.

However, a chain of minor errors or faults overlooked at each of the hierarchal level or functional domain can ultimately result in a humongous unfortunate disaster. This has been explained by James Reason, in his “Swiss Cheese Model”.

He proposed the image of "Swiss cheese" to explain the occurrence of system failures. According to this metaphor, in a complex system, hazards are prevented from causing human losses by a series of barriers. Each barrier has unintended weaknesses, or holes – hence the similarity with Swiss cheese. These weaknesses are inconstant – i.e., the holes open and close at random. When by chance all holes are aligned, the hazard reaches the workplace and causes harm. This model draws attention to the adherence of SoPs and Workplace guidelines by each level in hierarchy and by every functional domain. Any deviation to this is a DISASTER IN MAKING!

So, it would be prudent to enjoy munching on cheese on the platter than bringing it to the workplace.

Pictorial hoardings reminding the employees about their family can also tug their heartstrings and ensure compliance to the safety norms. Display Boards and hoarding installed at strategic/vulnerable places in the mines carrying safety slogans also proves beneficial in raising awareness in the miners.

Conducting of Annual safety fortnight, Rescue competitions, First-Aid competitions and other kinds of safety drives serves as the nectar in revving the safety culture and raising safety standard in the mines.

Working safely may get old, but so do those who practice it. So, if we want to ensure safety and achieve zero harm potential, we’ll have to lead life consciously in such a way that we win over our negligent behaviour and bring safety in our habit. In other words, we should marry Safety and Divorce negligence. This mantra, if rote by heart, shall help us to march towards a safer workplace.