LeadershIP the IP Way
Leadership is the foundation of everything International Paper (IP) stands for and is integral to the company’s long-term strategy to be one of the best, most respected companies in the world. The fact that we’ve been in business for 117 years says a lot about who we are as a company and the enduring value of the fiber-based products we make.
With 58,000 teammates across the globe, International Paper empowers every employee to demonstrate leadership across a number of key areas: safety, operational excellence, sustainability, people, customers and financial results. Employees follow an established leadership model that focuses on 3 C’s—Character, Capability and Catalyst. Beginning with Character, build your capability and be a catalyst for results. This approach guides how the company operates its businesses, approaches customer relationships and strives to lead, develop and grow talent within the organization. This is leadership the IP Way. For the past 42 years, the IP Way has been the driving force at the company’s local Coated Paperboard mill—or the “Tex Mill” as it’s often called. The facility’s 800 team members are committed to making Tex the leading, world-class manufacturer of high quality foodservice and fiber-based packaging solutions. Customers with some of the strongest and most popular brands in the quick service restaurant (QSR), gourmet coffee and smoothie markets depend on solid leadership from suppliers like International Paper. “We have a great team with outstanding leaders who are committed to safely producing top-quality products for our customers,” said Mill Manager Matt Barbour. “The Tex team has a rich history of employee leaders who lead and sustain improvements in safety, environmental stewardship, quality, people development and manufacturing excellence.”
Getting the results we desire safely is at the heart of the IP Way and that is driven by safety leadership. At International Paper, when we talk about safety, we say it’s about LIFE. LIFE is the company’s commitment to safety leadership through an engaged team and stands for Life-Changing Injury and Fatality Elimination. It’s about how people are valued across the entire company.
“LIFE is built on safety leadership,” Barbour says. “We have to lead by example, lead by not being afraid to make the right choice and by eliminating all shortcuts to ensure each one of our 800 teammates goes home to their family safely at the end of the day.”
Across the mill, the team is focused on less talk and more action. “We can’t ask our teammates to do anything we wouldn’t be willing to do ourselves,” Barbour said. “LIFE at Tex means caring about every teammate and having the courage to intervene if we see unsafe behaviors.”
Earlier this year, the Texarkana team celebrated a safety milestone going five years without a LIFE injury. It takes an all-handson-deck approach to sustain this progress. The mill’s safety philosophy hangs prominently in offices, control rooms and in production areas across the mill, serving as a visual reminder of the team’s commitment to LIFE. It states that there is no job so important that we cannot take the time to do it safely. It’s a pact that says safety is not one person’s job or one department’s responsibility. It is a commitment that says everyone at IP is empowered to be a safety leader.
Over the past three years, the team at Tex has developed a robust body of work around safety engagement and hazard recognition training. The team attributes a large portion of the step-change it has seen in safety leadership to the partnership between the United Steelworkers (USW) and International Paper through a program called Hazard Mapping.
The USW grant-funded program was introduced to International Paper in 2012, and was piloted at the Texarkana Mill. It’s a win-win across the board. Each month, a diverse team of employees—usually between 10 and 15—are scheduled to work a specific area for four days. During that time, they work together using a ranking system to identify risks, rank the risk level and eliminate any hazards in that area that can be repaired over the course of the week. On the final day, the Hazard Mapping team presents their findings. The results provide a safer area, more engaged teammates and heightened hazard awareness in departments across the mill. What began as an in-house safety program has matured into an established safety system, producing hundreds of safety leaders throughout the mill. Members of the mill’s Hazard Mapping team are now mentoring other mills across the IP system. For two consecutive years, the Hazard Mapping program at Texarkana has received top honors at the company and USW’s Joint Labor Conference. And, the program continues to gain momentum with ergonomics assessments incorporated into the program last year. “It’s great to see that Hazard Mapping is engaging people at the Texarkana Mill and across the company,” says Cheri Stuart, manager, Environmental, Health, Safety & Sustainability at the Texarkana Mill. “Our hope is that it continues to make a positive impact here and that it fosters the same level of engagement, ownership and safety leadership at our sister mills across the company.”
“We want to continue to empower our teammates to lead in all facets of our operation,” Barbour said. “Leadership is the critical lever we can pull to drive continuous and deliberate improvement and that’s the key to the Texarkana Mill achieving our goal of being the leading, world-class manufacturer of Coated Paperboard.”