Personal Commitment Drives Zero Harm Culture

For Tarmac’s chief executive, Terry Last, the mission to achieve ‘zero harm’ performance is driven not only by the importance of operating a responsible, safe and sustainable business focused around the principles of good corporate citizenship, but also by personal experiences from his career. The following is an extract from an address Terry gave to the IQ/MPA Joint Safety Day last October

In successful businesses, decisions and strategies are very often guided by previous experiences, the learnings we take from them and the subsequent personal pledges we make both to ourselves and to our colleagues.

My approach to creating a zero-harm culture within Tarmac has followed this pattern. We have made real progress in terms of our safety performance, in establishing a safety-conscious culture and in the priority that is given to the safety and well-being of everyone within our organization. However, it is a sad fact that the strategies and guidelines that I have helped develop in Tarmac have, for me, been shaped by tragic events that I have witnessed throughout my career in this industry.

One incident in particular, soon after the start of my working life, serves as a forceful and distressing reminder as to why I remain passionate about delivering zero harm today in the Tarmac business. In 1973, aged 23, I was working on the Caribbean island of Grenada where I had responsibility for operating a quarry to provide enough crushed stone to resurface the island’s then only runway.

Under my watch two workers were injured while operating a drill rig, and one, Black Jack, subsequently died. I did not kill him deliberately, I was not next to him when he was injured or when he died and I did not use a weapon or poison to kill him.

I marked out the holes that the men should drill and I helped them fill them with explosive when it was time to blast. It was while they were drilling the next set of shot holes that the drill stem exploded. Black Jack suffered bad injuries to his chest and hands and, despite getting him to hospital quickly, he died of tetanus a few days later.

The incident investigation revealed that a stick of gelignite had gone down a rock fissure, rather than staying in the previous blastholes, and the drill bit had detonated it.

We stopped the contract until after Black Jack’s funeral as I and his workmates were too shocked and concerned to carry on. I helped carry his coffin, which was very much appreciated by his friends and family who continually stressed I should feel no blame.

But for the past 38 years I have remembered this sad loss, and although I have, sadly, experienced other fatalities at work, it continues to drive me to do everything in my power to embed the best possible health and safety culture at Tarmac.

I know how hard it is to tell a family that their loved one will not be coming home. I know how distressing it is to take a man’s possessions from his work locker back to his wife and children. It is tough knowing that their initial welcome and forgiveness – because you have already told them that your company did not intend it to happen – turns inevitably, in due course, to anger and accusation as a natural part of the grieving process.

I have also had to stand in court answering questions, as the most senior officer of the company present, while a Magistrate passes judgment – another hard-hitting and humbling lesson.

The incident on Grenada and the others that I have sadly experienced in my career motivate me to do all I can to ensure zero harm exists in this industry during the rest of my working life. While I am pleased that the industry has made great strides in managing health and safety, zero harm is still an ambition and there is much we all need to do to make it a reality.

In today’s industry, how should we define what zero harm means? Many people think that it means zero physical injuries of any kind; others, no incidents which cause people to take time off work.

I firmly believe it goes way beyond this and is not just about people remaining unharmed and reducing the number of Lost Time Incidents (LTIs). Critically, it must also encompass zero impact on mental health and zero moral damage, as well as zero damage to business performance.

Getting zero harm right means that employees and contractors are not just healthy and engaged, but remain motivated at all times to accept and deliver their personal responsibilities, looking out for themselves and their colleagues. Ultimately, ensuring that everyone in your care has ownership of their behaviour is the only way to ensure that companies have healthy employees and a safe and sustainable business.

To get to this goal of zero harm requires hard work and robust strategic direction. Creating a clear vision and strategy is a key step in enabling a company to see where it wants to be and making a plan to get there. This requires effective leadership, because unless senior management leads from the front and employs talented leaders, you will not get anywhere. Communicating and promoting awareness of safety rules is crucial. It is vital to engage with individuals – whether employees, contractors or local communities around a site – so that they have a clear understanding of what is required of them and how this fits into the bigger picture.

It is also important to create a company culture that understands the critical importance of correct risk assessments. Risk assessments need to be undertaken carefully and skilfully, without unnecessary pressure and bureaucracy. I believe that one of the biggest challenges our industry faces is to give the individuals we charge with doing risk assessments, the time and training to do them properly.

What all this adds up to is the fact that creating a company that has a zero-harm mentality makes total business sense. Yes, there is a financial and time cost to training staff and embedding a zero-harm culture, but the implications of not doing it, are, to me, immeasurable.

At Tarmac, we have made real progress in moving towards our zero-harm targets. Today, I am pleased that 97% of our 300 UK sites have been LTI free for one year or more. While this is a good achievement, I will not be satisfied until this is 100%, and I know that we need to continue to up our game.

Our journey towards zero harm is based on three guiding principles: a zero-harm mindset and a belief that all injuries and occupational illnesses are preventable; no repeats, with all necessary steps taken to learn from incidents and prevent recurrence; and robust, non-negotiable standards being rigorously applied across the business.

The safety of the people under my stewardship is something that genuinely sits at the heart of Tarmac. It is vital to me that a zero-harm culture of safety and mutual respect is adopted by every single employee at every single site that we operate or work on.

Our success in achieving a target of zero harm rests on us all taking responsibility for our actions and delivering on personal commitments to ourselves and our colleagues. I owe this to the memory of my colleague Black Jack in Grenada. We all owe this to ourselves and our fellow workers.