Safety interactions

For several years, Coal & Allied has utilised safety interactions as a key tool in reaching our goal of an injury free workplace. Safety interactions generally involve a targeted discussion between employees to better understand the risks involved in an activity, be it a workplace activity such as changing a tyre or an out of work activity such as driving. The purpose of safety interactions is to reinforce safe behaviours and gain commitment to improve less safe behaviours.

Coal & Allied is currently actively implementing 'peer to peer' safety interactions across our sites. This programme of interactions is separate from the current safety interactions process for managers and supervisors in that it is designed and implemented by a team of operational employees at each site.

To encourage employee participation, the programme of 'peer to peer' safety interactions is optional and results are confidential. Implementation is different for each site, but is implemented by employees who are responsible for designing, implementing coaching and driving the process on-site.

A programme of 'peer-to-peer' interactions was trialled at Bengalla mine in 2007. The programme reinforced the value of safety interactions by increasing the 'ownership' of health and safety within the teams on site, encouraging safe behaviours and work habits and obtaining a commitment from individuals to improve and sustain safe behaviours.

In 2008 our target is to introduce the 'peer-to-peer' safety interaction process across all Coal & Allied sites and begin to collect data to periodically review and analyse the success of the programme.