Towards Zero Injuries. The Rosatom Experience
Context: Why Safety Culture Requires a Systematic Approach
Achieving zero injuries is not just a slogan, but a complex process of corporate culture transformation. In large-scale production environments, such as Rosatom enterprises, traditional methods of control and punishment (the so-called "stick") reach their limit of effectiveness. Speaker Ivan Polishchuk, Director of the Safety Culture Development Center at the Rosatom Corporate Academy, explains why further reducing injuries requires moving from reactive to proactive management, building an atmosphere of openness and trust.
Three Pillars of Safe Behavior Culture Development
The presentation details a systematic Rosatom project launched three years ago. It is based on three key elements:
- Engagement and Awareness: It is not enough to just hang posters. Communication only works when there is a real person (an active employee at the enterprise) who discusses the information with the team. The speaker shows by example that unmoderated discussions among workers have a much greater effect on behavior change than direct propaganda.
- Education and Training: Distance learning formats for blue-collar jobs proved ineffective. The success of a local trainer depends not so much on their expert knowledge, but on their motivation and ability to let workers speak out.
- Changing the Environment and Processes: If a trained employee returns to the old management system, they start working the old way. It is necessary to implement tools (for example, safety dialogues or problem-solving boards) that correspond to the current level of culture maturity (according to the Bradley curve) and see their implementation through to the end.
Lessons and Conclusions from Rosatom's Practice
The speaker shares important insights gained during the project implementation. First, the engagement of the enterprise's top executive is critically important. Second, there are no universal tools that work the same everywhere — they must be selected individually and implemented with high quality. Third, abandoning inter-enterprise ratings helps avoid "paper leadership" and stimulates real process improvement, where the organization competes with itself.
What You Will Learn from This Webinar:
- How to move from playing "cops and robbers" to a partnership between workers and management?
- Why classic distance learning doesn't work for blue-collar workers and what to replace it with?
- How to properly implement safety tools (e.g., problem-solving boards) so they actually work?
- Why abandoning department ratings can be beneficial for developing a safety culture?
- How to use Vision Zero principles and the Bradley curve for enterprise diagnostics and development?
Comments 19
Vladislav Khmyrov: Is it possible to develop leadership from the bottom up rather than top down, if there's formalism at the top?
Answer: Our experience shows that it is possible, but it increases labor costs many times over, and requires active, caring people who won't "give up." At the same time, it helps to support these people through the attention of the Corporate Center and to exert appropriate influence on managers, if possible, from above or from the side.
Chingiz Dovgaev: Good day, dear colleagues. Ivan, could you please tell me how and where I, as a young person, can learn to present like this, to convey materials so simply? Thank you in advance.
Answer: As one of my managers at my previous job used to say, to learn to present, you need to do three things: present, present, present. Good luck to you.
Valentin Nagornyuk: Ivan, thank you very much for the very interesting material. Question: Rosatom implements many construction projects around the world. Construction project timelines are limited, and as I assume, there may very well be a "race for volumes" to complete the project on schedule. Accordingly, when there's a rush, there are risks that safety issues will not be the top priority in such situations. Do you have special tools for maintaining a high level of safety culture during such "deadline races" on construction sites?
Answer: In this case, there are KPI indicators for managers that encourage accident prevention, but such a problem does exist. Our main task is not to determine the priority — production or safety — but to form a harmonious combination in managers' minds based on production culture principles, where both safety and efficiency issues are equally considered. The main tool and lever of influence on managers is the position of industry leadership, which we communicate accordingly.
Vladislav Khmyrov: What criteria do you incorporate into the motivation system?
Answer: Each individual organization in our project independently determines both the criteria and motivation tools. As a basis for developing criteria, we use the leadership model, Vision Zero principles, and other performance management tools. In terms of types of motivation, this is also at the discretion of organizations — material or non-material.
Vladislav Khmyrov: How and from whom should leaders in conscious safety be developed?
Answer: From people who care. At Rosatom, these are young professionals, change support teams, safety culture ambassadors, and occupational safety representatives.
Denis Parvan: How important is it to involve rank-and-file office employees when building a safety culture? What can they influence?
Answer: We believe office workers should be involved in building a safety culture. There are several reasons, in my view. 1. There should be a unified context of implemented changes for everyone. 2. Resolving safety culture issues requires involving lawyers, finance professionals, and other specialists. This allows certain issues to be resolved faster. Therefore, their engagement is also important. 3. Office employees have their own risks: falling on stairs, fire safety, etc. These also relate to safety culture.
Yuri Filippov: When calculating LTIFR, are accidents involving contractors, subcontractors, and generally any organizations operating on Rosatom territory included?
Answer: If the contracting organization is within Rosatom's perimeter, then yes. If it's an external organization, then no. However, an approach is currently being developed where we will treat contractors on our site as our own employees.
Rinat Kurmanov: Good afternoon! Very interesting report on a great deal of work done. A lot is related to human behavior. Were psychologists involved in the project, and if not, on what basis were such decisions made?
Answer: I, in particular, have a psychology degree. We involve people with psychology education in our work, and at enterprises we actively engage human factors reliability specialists, whose basic education is also in psychology. Additionally, we use research, practical experience, and expert knowledge in our work.
Ivan Lyashchenko: Safety culture is like patriotism. It's not business that should develop it, but the state. From childhood, from school. The school subject "Life Safety Basics" has almost nothing about occupational safety and safety culture. To ensure that injury rates in Russia are not several times higher than in European countries, corrections in the upbringing of the younger generation are needed. To what extent can you agree with this position?
Answer: I partly agree. As far as I know, Yulia Shoigu and colleagues are currently developing a unified Life Safety textbook that will also focus on risks and hazards that surround us in everyday life, which will develop children's skill in assessing danger. At the same time, I believe that work at the organizational level, especially in production enterprises, is a very important element of forming a national culture of preserving life in the workplace.
Valery Molev: Does how safely a person behaves at home correlate with how safely they work at the workplace?
Answer: Absolutely agree.
Ilya Panov: If management evaluates departments by achieving engagement goals, asking monthly why it's not 90%, won't this lead to formalism?
Answer: The risk of formalism in engagement research is high if an engagement target is set, for example, at 90%. In this case, employees are more likely to chase the number rather than a meaningful result. At Rosatom State Corporation, as far as I know, the engagement level is not included in managers' KPIs.
Gennady Chernyakevich: In your opinion, why is risk assessment ineffective?
Answer: In slide number 18, I presented tools that started working or didn't in one specific organization. Therefore, in general, risk assessment is a very promising tool. In this specific case, it didn't work because the organization was not mature enough to involve frontline workers in risk assessment. This is only at the organizational level. When conditions mature at a specific enterprise, we will definitely return to this issue.
Dmitry Korsakov: The tools described directly overlap with the implementation of international standards. Question: are there plans to develop a procedure for implementing tools as component parts and provide it to smaller enterprises? It would greatly help industry professionals who want to implement or develop something, while you've already done it — just integrate, guided by production specifics.
Answer: Currently there are no such plans, however we will be packaging our methodology as a product, approximately by 2023-2024.
Sapabek Kuzhemuratov: VZ = "0 injuries"? Through your efforts, fatal injuries were reduced to 5 cases? Were cases of death or disability from occupational diseases included in this count?
Answer: VZ = "0 injuries"? In our understanding — yes. Through your efforts, fatal injuries were reduced to 5 cases? This work was done before us. Our task is to reduce from 5 cases to 0. We record disabilities — that's classified as severe injuries, but occupational diseases — no.
Andrey Kuznetsov: What model is used for safety culture diagnostics?
Was the safety culture model (INSAG-4, WANO) used when assessing the safety culture level? If so, does each enterprise have its own or is it shared across all?
Answer: We use the Bradley Curve (4 levels). At the same time, organizations in the industry also use Hudson, INSAG, and WANO.
Valery Molev: What indicator do you use instead of LTIFR?
Answer: Currently, the State Corporation uses proactive indicators. There are six: submitted OHS improvement proposals, accepted OHS improvement proposals, personnel participation in employee engagement activities for OHS, work with micro-injuries and implementation of recurrence prevention measures, work with unsafe actions and implementation of recurrence prevention measures, and occupational risk management.
Konstantin Yerin: Last year you presented a repeatability coefficient for safety behavioral audits and precursors. Could you share the results of this work? What measures were taken in case of negative trends? Thank you in advance.
Answer: If I remember correctly, I was talking not about the repeatability coefficient for behavioral audits, but about the repeatability coefficient for low-level events. To intensify this work, we are implementing a proactive indicator — working with micro-injuries and implementing measures to prevent recurrence, as well as working with unsafe actions and implementing measures to prevent recurrence. So far, we have piloted these approaches in several industry divisions; we currently see no negative trends in these indicators — rather, a tendency toward improvement.
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