Bamigboye: Safety Management is the Core of Business Survival
In this interview with Crusoe Osagie, the Director, Safety, Health & Environment, Nigerite Limited, John Bamigboye says the company believes that adopting an effective safety management model is the key to business survival. Excerpts:
If you deliver goods to long distances and record no accidents, it is a lot of savings. God forbid we record any fatality during production or anywhere on our premises; the government will close us down till after their investigation, so it is a lot of savings and return on investments
You are soon to celebrate two years without any accident at Nigerite, how did you achieve this and why is it important? For starters, I like to place on record that although working without accidents at Nigerite for two years is an outstanding achievement, we plan to take the accomplishment far beyond two years. We want to keep the record going and ultimately set an outstanding record.
There is no amount of financial growth, innovation and business expansion and profitability that can be equated to the safety of wellbeing of the people carrying out the industrial and business activities. As a matter of fact a single accident can wipe out the good profit that the business may have made for the past 10 years.
What financial value is appropriate or equivalent to the life of one human being, I doubt if this can be quantified. This is the reason therefore why we place high premium on safety in our organisation. Our profitability and business success only has value to us when our people, the community where we operate and the environment are safe and intact
What does the term SafeStart depict? SafeStart is a behavioral change safety approach. It works with the state of mind, since the way we behave or act depends on our state of mind. Frustrations and or fatigued minds are more prone to errors and such errors may lead to accidents that may either be fatal or minor. SafeStart trains the mind and ultimately affects behaviors in work place.
Why the introduction of SafeStart in Nigeria at this time? For many years back, our safety slogan has been ‘Safety Our Culture’ . We have been trying to adapt to it, but it is definitely not easy. For instance, when the Federal Road Safety Corp made the use of safety belts compulsory in Nigeria, it was very difficult to implement. Nigerians only put on their belts when they see a road safety official, but gradually, it became a part of us. Meanwhile, Nigerite when you close by 9pm and on your way home, you will see our staff putting on their safety belts without being told. Now it is very rare to see someone drive in Nigeria without safety belts, because we now feel uncomfortable without it. In Nigerite, we have put so many things in place to make our workers and machines safe. What we have been doing in recent time is to carry out a risk assessment to make our old machines comply with the new norms. We have done quite a lot in safety management and now SafeStart will affect the behavior to safety. We can put all the safety mechanisms in place, but the behavior of the end users is important. So going forward, ETEX our parent body located in over 40 countries, have made safety their priority. The first objective of everybody in ETEX group is to check the frequency rate of accidents. This has become priority from directors to the floor least staff. In Nigeria, ETEX group selected Nigerite Lagos and EMENITE in Enugu along with four other companies to undergo the first phase of safestart. They believe in us because they know that we have this approach of doing things the right way, so if they succeed with us, they are going to succeed with others. The first success of safestart has to do with the management’s commitment and in Nigerite, we have the management’s commitment, because the Chief Operating Officer and the Managing Director are both committed. Safestart has to do with a behavioural-based safety approach. It has to do with our state of mind, because the way we behave has to do with our state of mind. If you are frustrated, you will commit errors, if you are fatigued, you will commit errors, but there is a way we change all these things that will not let people commit errors that will lead to death or injuries. We have minor and major injuries and these, happen every day. So this company has developed the theory behind reducing these errors.
What would you consider some of the benefits of the initiative? Safe start is about reducing errors that can lead to injuries. There are many benefits such as cost reduction. We have worked on state of mind to reduce our errors.
How much have you invested in safety management over the years? I cannot say specifically that this is how much we have expended over the years on safety, but as a company, we do not spare any cost on safety.
Any plan to involve communities, companies on safety awareness campaign? We are involved in many safety management competitions through NECA, which is Nigeria Employer Consultative Association where we compete every year and have won an ambulance free of charge for being safety compliant. We were involved in a safety competition last year when we came third after Guinness and Nigeria Breweries, and we are ready to compete with them. In terms of environment, we came first last year, we do not relent and we are also proactive and upcoming. At the same time, we support so many corporate social responsibility activities. We go to school, communities, local government to raise awareness and support for green awareness initiative. We intend to take it to our families, but we have to start with building the foundation with our workers and later to our contractors. We have been involved in many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes. This will not be a difficult exercise for us at all. We have a very good relationship with the State Government through Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) and other regulatory agencies in the country. We are always working in synergy with them and have already built relationships. So carrying it forward is going to be very easy for us.
How have you fared investing in safety management in this harsh business environment? There is a relationship between safety and return on investments. When you are safety conscious, you save a lot of money. Two years ago we made an investment that is worth billions of naira to successfully offload an autoclave from its container. Any mistake with the offloading would have caused our company shutting down. So doing something in a safe way is a lot of savings for the company. If you deliver goods to long distances and record no accidents, it is a lot of savings. God forbid we record any fatality during production or anywhere on our premises; the government will close us down till after their investigation, so it is a lot of savings and return on investments. If we work on our habits, there are so many things we can achieve. During our production runs, if there are less rejects, it will translate to savings for us. We have started working on our mindset to achieve all of this and we believe that the SafeStart initiative is a paradigm shift.
What more should customers expect in 2017? Customers are assured of best quality goods at reasonable costs. We have started looking inwards to reduce our cost of production. The first target we have been given in this 2017 is cost reduction and to work on our five S. This is a project we just recently started with the aim of maintaining a clean environment. It is to ensure that whatever we do, we sort, we shine and standardize our operations so that any time you come to our environment it remains the same. It is a big project and we believe we are going to make a success of it.
What are your efforts in sourcing raw materials locally? We have started that a long time ago, most of our raw materials were basically imported, but the new products we are doing now, the raw materials are heavily sourced locally. We had benchmarked and also done lots of research in the past to make sure that our raw materials are locally sourced. We set up an innovation committee which is always looking every time to see how we can locally source our raw materials. We are on the right course to achieving a greater increase in local content.