🛡️ Safety: “Safety: Acting Together” (UC RUSAL) — sharing my experience

This is probably one of the most effective projects of my career. I am genuinely proud that my colleagues and I managed to bring it to life.

We faced a serious challenge: in the newly created Downstream Division of RUSAL we had to ensure reliable operation of the plants, with no injuries and no accidents.

To achieve this, we had to:

• Build a corporate occupational safety management system from scratch.
• Introduce a set of standards and management mechanisms based on the world's best practices (including the “classics” — the DuPont philosophy and methodology).

At first, the main and most difficult task seemed unattainable to us — to change people's day-to-day behaviour at the workplace (11 plants across different regions, around 8,000 employees).

We worked on it patiently and consistently, step by step shaping a single corporate culture of safe work. Our “Look Around” Programme (safety observations), which I presented at one of the HSE DAYS webinars, was a great help here: https://www.hsedays.ru/library/workplace-safety-observation-program.

“Safety is a house we build for ourselves and for those who will come after us” — this unofficial motto has always inspired our team.

Our results after 5 years of intensive work:

✅ The injury frequency rate fell 7.3-fold! The number of lost-time injuries dropped from 29 to 2 people per year.

✅ Employee engagement grew to 42%. People began to take part voluntarily and consciously in identifying hazardous conditions and stopping unsafe acts.

✅ The elimination of workplace hazards increased more than 6-fold — without coercion or “negative” motivation.

Key success factors:

1. Leadership and personal involvement of the top executive. He became the main driver of change: from setting the task to implementing practical solutions, monitoring the results achieved and motivating our whole large team.
2. Leadership and teamwork of the plant directors. It was they who organised the cascade roll-out of the programmes on site, opening up new opportunities to share experience and best practices.
3. Teamwork of the occupational and industrial safety services. We managed to build an effective team of like-minded people, to learn to speak the same language, to hear and understand each other. The professional expertise and support of colleagues cannot be overestimated.
4. A well-thought-out strategy and clear tactics. We consistently developed and rolled out a set of system-forming and operational management programmes and organisational tools.
5. Employee involvement. We put our stake on motivating people and on real changes at the workplace — and we did not lose. We did all the work in-house: without external contractors, inflated budgets or “nice pictures” for the bosses.

A description of the project is presented in the attached video. I hope our experience will help other companies solve practical occupational safety tasks.

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💬 Colleagues, I would be grateful for your reactions and comments! 👇