Action

For an electrical utility safety is paramount, so when this client realized hazard assessment processes were not being universally followed, they asked Navigo to design and facilitate an employee-driven approach to redesign the existing process and implement the changes.

The situation

Although employees in our client organization were required to assess safety hazards prior to beginning any jobs involving two or more workers, in practice these assessments were not always completed. Employees considered the evaluation process flawed because the level of due diligence applied was based on factors that did not include the severity of hazard – the process was applied the same way for both low and high hazard work. Management acknowledged the process needed revision, and that employee adoption of the changes would be key in enabling them to ‘stick’.  

The approach

The Job Planning Team, comprised of employees representing trade groups and management, was established. This team was given a clear mandate: to develop a new process and tools for ensuring the assessment of safety hazards, and the selection of effective barriers to mitigate the hazards, were fully integrated into work planning. In addition, the team was assigned the following responsibilities: to train employees on how to use the new process and tools; and to provide peer coaching to support the application and adoption of changes. These additional responsibilities proved to be critical to the team’s success.

To facilitate peer to peer learning, the Job Planning Team invited employees from another organization with an excellent reputation for job safety planning to share their processes and tools. The team combined this information with their own experience to develop a vision of the desired process. The team then identified the gaps between the current and future states.

Between team meetings, the Job Planning Team members returned to their work locations across the province to report on their progress and seek input from their peers. They repeated this sequence of communicating progress and obtaining input from peers a number of times during the design phase and also took the time to conduct regular check-ins with key members of the management team in order to build management commitment to the revised process and tools.

The Job Planning Team took an active role in developing the training required to enable employees to use the new process and tools. In order to reduce implementation risks, the process and tools were pilot tested in a small number of locations to confirm the improvements in practice and build employee support. Team members delivered training at the test sites in partnership with local management, and training was combined with on the job coaching to support peers in effectively applying the process and tools.

The results

Three success measures were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot tests and ultimately the project itself:

• Speed of adoption - the percentage of employees trained in a defined period of time.
• Utilization - the percentage of employees using the process and tools in their daily work.
• Proficiency - the percentage of employees using the process and tools correctly.

Based on the results of the first pilot test, the process, tools and training were all revised. The pilot test was then repeated to confirm that revisions had addressed the concerns of both employees and management. After the second pilot test, positive employee reactions resulted in a number of the non-pilot test locations asking for the implementation schedule to be accelerated so they could have access to the process and tools.

The team members continue to provide coaching, on an as required basis, to ensure the change is sustained.