The 3M Aycliffe plant presents a model of safety excellence

Also situated at the factory is the 3M Occupational Health and Environmental Safety (OHES) European Laboratory - part of the global 3M reseach and development laboratory network. The

3M

OHES Laboratory is responsible for the design and development of some of 3M's most innovative respiratory protection products - including the 9300 series foldable respirators, the 4000 series reusable gas and vapour respirators and the Jupiter Turbo unit. All three products are exclusively manufactured at Aycliffe. This unique co-location of research and development and manufacturing has been a key success factor for 3M OHES. So, how does this plant manage to deal with the issues of health and safety compliance?

Practise what you preach - a commitment to safety
The factory, which employs 320 people - 85 per cent of whom live within 6 miles - regularly makes local headlines with reports of excellent safety records and health campaigns for the staff.

3M's commitment to its employees speaks for itself. There are few UK factories that can claim four million hours (five years) of accident free working - rather reassuring from a site where safety equipment is the main output. Whilst compliance with safe manufacturing processes is mandatory, employee involvement in the company's opt-in healthy living campaign is equally well supported. This year, the site has already won a RoSPA President's Award for accident prevention and two gold medals in the Public Health County Durham and Darlington 'Working for Health' scheme. Its many accolades in recent years also include the Regional 'BBC Big Challenge' Healthy Workplace Award.

Accident reduction
Environmental Health and Safety Manager for the plant, Adrian Hughes, highlights what they have managed to achieve: "Health and safety has always been important to 3M and at Aycliffe, we have really seen an improvement in our performance since 2003."

The plant reached a major milestone in September 2008 where it achieved its four million hour milestone. Adrian explains: "We now use a three year rolling strategic local planning process to ensure we drive improvements in performance."

Making it work
But how have they managed to achieve these results? Adrian continues: "We have been running a behavioural safety programme here at Aycliffe for ten years and I do believe that those principles have created a more positive culture. However, behavioural safety on its own has a limited effect. It is important that you have robust safety management procedures, policies and an engaged workforce to see real improvement."

As well as many health and wellbeing campaigns, the plant also actively promotes '24 hour Environmental Health and Safety Thinking' to capture the hearts and minds of its people. Many of the 24 hour initiatives are not directly work related - for example, safety in the home, driver safety, and Christmas and summer holiday safety campaigns. The local police force has also been involved in providing staff with information on the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

Adrian illustrates how this theme works at the factory: "We use the 24 hour theme as it demonstrates how safety is not just a workplace issue. It affects all aspects of our lives. We have seen a really positive change in behaviour within the workplace with this method. The police visit went down very well, particularly with parents of young children. What we are trying to create is a safety mindset in people. By doing this, when they come back into the workplace they tend to see things differently - from a safety perspective. If you have all these tools in place then behavioural safety becomes an effective tool in identifying 'safe and unsafe acts' in the workplace."

Worker participation is achieved through toolbox talks, monthly meetings, participation in Site Safety Committees and attendance at practical workshops (Ken Woodward a Durham Constabulary Accident Reduction Officer gave presentations in November 2008. Attendance at both events was over 90 per cent). Every person onsite also has to have a valid Aycliffe Safety Training Certificate, which is refreshed every three years. This is an 'in house' safety programme that has been developed to test people's understanding and safety awareness in the Aycliffe workplace. To be awarded the certificate, each candidate must achieve an 80 per cent pass rate.

"Over the years, employees' confidence in safety has increased at Aycliffe and having behavioural dialogues with co-workers or strangers is commonplace for our people," reveals Adrian. "To give you an example, last year alone more than 3,600 safety dialogues were recorded and from this we were able to create safety campaigns to raise people's awareness of safety issues that were occurring on the site. I like to think that constantly challenging the way we do things, from a safety perspective, gets us ahead of the game and will help us improve our safety performance."

However, it is not realistic or possible to achieve an environment where accidents never happen and two incidents have occured since November 2008. Adrian explains what he thinks may have caused this: "We believe that having achieved the four million hours without an accident, we are now having to manage the perceptions of people who believe that nothing can happen to them at work. Ensuring that the workforce remains engaged and making sure that all employees keep thinking about their everyday tasks, and, more importantly, asking themselves what could go wrong, will help us to achieve our ultimate goal of an interdependent safety culture. We have now launched a programme which is promoting 'the consequences of accidents' which promotes a visual image of things going wrong, for example, posters,videos and group discussions."

Reporting it all
But how do you make sure that all accidents are reported? Adrian continues: "We encourage people to report everything, even down to a paper cut. The more people report, the more chance we have of determining what changes are required in the workplace before a significant incident occurs. This is managed by our occupational nurse who analyses the data on a monthly basis and advises of any trends or issues that may be emerging."

All minor injuries are reported through the Occupational Health Department using an electronic database. After the injury is reported, there is a requirement on the individual supervisor to complete a follow-up report to determine the root causes. These are then reviewed on a regular basis by the Site Safety Committee.

The reporting process for near misses is almost the same as the minor incidents system. It is about making sure people are reporting everything and then engaging supervisors to work with the health and safety team to investigate them. This enables the root cause to be determined and corrective actions agreed.

"As well as agreeing the corrective action, it is also important to test how robust the action is - we need to make sure that it will work and is practical," Adrian points out. "Communicating these incidents to the workforce is also important. Just because something hasn't happened in one department, doesn't mean it won't happen elsewhere in the factory."

"We take all behavioural dialogues, near misses and minor injuries seriously. We try to ensure that the corrective action is agreed, tested and robust to help us improve our mean time between incidents. Health and safety is really about pulling together as a team with common goals and objectives. In an ideal world we are seeking engaged people, who will take a little time out to think through their actions and are able to relate to the consequences of things going wrong. We are trying to create a culture where we can challenge the norms and perceptions health and safety."

Getting it right from the top down

Though safety at Aycliffe does not just belong in the boardroom or meeting room, it is absolutely vital that senior management are 100 per cent committed to improving the safety of their employees. Without this level of 'buy in' any workplace safety initiatives will struggle to have an impact over the long term. Adrian finishes: "You have to demonstrate safety in your behaviour and make it visible to everyone. We call this 'Active Visible Leadership'. Here a positive safety culture is now embedded into the people, so when there are people changes at a senior level, this has no impact on our health and safety programmes. In my view health and safety has become a core company value. It is an integral part of our business."