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MINE SAFETY Couragous Leadership Instilling a culture of safety By Bruce Huber A few years ago, Barrick Gold Corp. was try- ing to determine how it could make a step- change improvement in safety perform- ance across the company. After analyzing the various safety systems and tools in place at sites, we realized that continuing to focus on what I call the 'technical side of safety' might achieve some modest and regular performance improvements. However, we were never going to see dra- matic improvement using this approach and further, it would take 40 years or more to approach zero injuries. We observed that the same tool being used effectively at one site had very little impact at another mine. The tool was the same; it was the people using the tool that made the difference. We had to shift our focus to achieve a better balance between technical safety (policies, procedures, training and auditing) and the people side of safety (leading, moti- "Courageous Safety Leadership focuses on people skills, communication, openness and transparency, honesty and integrity. It is also about empowering people to speak up when things are not right as well as accepting responsibility." vating, coaching and inspiring). With the help of Jim Clemmer, a recognized leader- ship consultant, Barrick's Courageous Safety Leadership program was born. The foundation of the program is a two- day training program for every supervisory level employee and a one-day course for every worker. The course is designed around people. It is highly motivational, very inspi- rational and requires a lot of participation. There are roughly three hours of teaching (lecture) in the two day version. The rest of the time, the participants are engaged in workgroup or individual activities, all focused on specific people issues. When I left Barrick, more than 30,000 employees and contractors had taken this training. We experienced a 65% reduction in total re- cordable incidents. Everyone in the compa- ny credited Courageous Safety Leadership with changing the company culture. We developed the vision "every person going home safe and healthy every day" believing it was possible to achieve that www.e-mj.com JUNE 2012 • E&MJ; 111