By Heather West
Canada’s Oldest Company Forges Forward With A Detailed Health and Safety Plan
Chances are, the early employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company (Hbc) weren’t guided by a health and safety program as they helped the company achieve its goals. In fact, it is likely that those who explored, claimed and protected land, hunted, and established trading agreements, considered injury, illness and death to be “all in a day’s work.”
Three hundred and thirty-six years later, the working conditions are more civilized, yet the threat of injury, illness and death still exists. Today, however, Hbc employees are guided by a comprehensive health and safety system, and the prevention of injury and illness is an expected part of everyone’s workday.
Given its grand old age, health and safety is a relatively new development for Hbc. Brian Cassidy, national health and safety manager for the company, was there when the process of integration began just 15 years ago. “Hbc was progressive in identifying health and safety as an issue, and put a department in place. Over time it has evolved to the point where it is now integrated into the business.” he explains. Cassidy now heads up a department of five people—a busy group considering that Hbc employs over 70,000 associates in 570 stores across Canada under five banners: The Bay, Zellers, Home Outfitters, Designer Depot and Fields (Western Canada). Cassidy talks proudly about an integrated health and safety system, the strong commitment of his senior management team, shared accountability among line managers, and shared responsibility among associates.
Getting to this point, however, hasn’t been easy. Making others understand what integrating health and safety means took a lot of energy and commitment. The tipping point occurred when it shifted from being a maternal or paternal philosophy and was recognized as a vital strategic lever. When asked what actions helped them gain momentum in garnering the co-operation and commitment of the rest of the organization, Cassidy points to three key factors: partnerships, strategic alignment, and accountability.
BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS
Early on in the process, Bob Kolida the senior vice president of human resources helped Cassidy and his team gain the attention of the senior management team, and the vocal support of the CEO played a huge role in validating the program. “In order to gain management support of the program, you have to help them understand social and legal responsibility in terms of due diligence, and the costs associated with injuries,” says Cassidy. “You also have to make the customer service connection for them.”
Over time, Cassidy’s team has developed other partnerships inside and outside the organization to help with the ongoing development of the health and safety system. General line management (those who operate the stores and distribution centres) and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the areas of foodservice, loss prevention and store operations have all played a key role in the developing standards for each job at Hbc. In addition, SMEs lend assistance with incident investigations to identify causes and develop performance measures.
Together these groups developed the Health and Safety Roadmap, which has three strategic levers:
Cassidy also refers to OSSA as an important partner to Hbc. “We have been heavily involved with OSSA over the past year, which has helped us to greatly improve the content and execution of our health and safety program.” He also considers his relationship with WSIB account managers and case managers to be very important.
Another strategic partner for Hbc’s health and safety team is Windley Ely, a firm that assists with workplace injury management services, through a call centre that provides guidance and support to
store management teams.
CREATING STRATEGIC ALIGNMENTS
Cassidy believes firmly that for health and safety to stick, you have to first understand the priorities of your business, and then translate that message into something that operators understand. Hbc believes that all injuries are preventable. Their vision is zero lost-time injuries. When this vision was first introduced, people thought it was crazy and questioned why management hadn’t identified a more realistic goal. Cassidy explains: “We broke it into bite-sized pieces and managers started to see that when they reviewed a three month period it was possible to see zero lost-time injuries.”
ESTABLISHING ACCOUNTABILITY
Another means of capturing attention was to focus on expense control in aid of improving bottom line results. “We made store managers accountable for health and safety. Not by adding a blanket statement to performance appraisals, but in a real and tangible way,” says Cassidy. “Store managers are merchants—they understand profit and loss statements. We made them accountable for the cost of injuries on their P&L statements. When managers saw the direct impact on store performance, they paid greater attention to injury prevention, as well as to accommodation of injured associates.”
At Hbc, they refer to this as the “Safety Pays” program, which operates, in essence, as their own internal experience rating system. The monies collected from stores that experience injuries, are used to award rebates to others who have succeeded in achieving zero injuries during a specified period of time.
WORKING TOGETHER
The partnership with line managers is a reciprocal one—store operators are able to enhance store performance by paying attention to health and safety, and the health and safety team benefits from the store operators’ commitment to informing and training associates to work in a healthy and safe manner. “We all reinforce the message with our associates that we want them to go home to their families at the end of the shift, not to the hospital,” says Cassidy.
When they join Hbc, every employee receives a booklet called “Your Guide to Health and Safety.” The booklet outlines the role that each level in the organization plays in health and safety, as well as basic safety procedures and information. This is followed up with job-specific and hazard specific training.
This is critical given the broad spectrum of work environments that exist under all five banners, many of which are physically demanding—from food preparation in kitchens, to unloading trucks, to stocking shelves. Managers stay in touch with health and safety issues and information by participating in regular conference calls and by using the health and safety intranet site, which is also used by health and safety committees. Every store, office location and distribution centre is required to have a health and safety committee. The health and safety team provides a JHSC kit to each store and distribution centre every month to ensure that a consistent and effective meeting process takes place. Kits include an agenda, designated topic of discussion, background material, a message to the store manager (executive summary), a message to associates (for posting and sharing in meetings), and a workplace inspection sheet. They also receive a safety“24/7” topic—a section of the package that addresses safety at home, because Hbc believes that if employees are thinking about safety at home, they are more likely to think about it at work. “The kits give consistent structure and direction each month to all stores,” says Cassidy. “Th ey are all looking at the same things. The information is relevant and corresponds with trends and activities at the stores and centres.”
During one of his store visits, Hbc’s new CEO acknowledged Zellers Bramalea City Centre for achieving zero losttime injuries for the year, in 2005—an important accomplishment, and an illustration of how health and safety and profiability work hand in hand. “This is a very profitable store,” notes Cassidy. “Safety is achieved not at the expense of profitability or productivity—it can actually enhance it.”
Hbc has seen great progress and results through integrating health and safety. In 2005, the company achieved a 10 per cent reduction in total workers’ compensation claims, a 22 per cent reduction in lost time claims, and a 34 per cent reduction in workdays lost due to injuries. They also received a Certificate of Recognition from the Alberta Workers’ Compensation Board under the Partners in Injury Reduction program.
However, Cassidy is quick to note that they still have a long way to go. “We still have injuries. By no means do we think our work is done.”
WHAT’S ON TAP FOR THE REST OF 2006?
With a new CEO at the helm, Hbc employees will find themselves exploring some new territory, but unlike their fur-trading predecessors, employees today know that no matter what adventures lie ahead, their health and safety is a key business priority at Hbc.
Excerpted from Safety Mosaic, Summer 2006, Vol. 9, No. 2
That some hospitals in Ontario have an Occupational Health Clinic.