Bellenberg, Germany, is a leading Hydro site in a new drive toward world-class safety performance. "Employees are changing their behavior and sharing their knowledge - and getting better at what they do.
Getting into the minds of employees is one of the steps in this", says Dieter Mick, Bellenberg's Works Council head.
"We are going in a new direction with safety," he says. "We must follow proper safety procedures. However, the change will come from the workers themselves and not from management. We will be able to steer and improve the basics of safety by ourselves.
Mick is working closely with this cultural change due to his role as employee representative for some 100 colleagues in Bellenberg. The plant has one extrusion press and three automats for thermal break, as a leading supplier of Hydro Building Systems Wicona.
"Workers are now talking more with each other about what they do and how and why they do it, every day. We are doing things before accidents happen. This isn't about near-miss reports, and it isn't something that we do on occasion and plan for it, like the traditional safety tools. We are beyond that. We get opinions all the time. Even safe work is feedback. I also feel that this is more motivational than the traditional way we have done things, because of the feedback."
"People have been used to getting direction from above and, consequently, have been less encouraged to finding safe solutions. The behavior-based (BBS) tool is renewing the system", says Mick. "It's perfect to improve a safety level that is already high level, but we need time to raise the awareness of the workers. They got used to safety as a line responsibility. So I think it will take some time and encouraging coordinators to make it run well. If we get it to the point, where everyone "likes" behavior-based safety, it will run itself without any orders".
