The two-hour Safety Kick-Off Briefings took place across all EPC-UK sites, and encouraged every employee to take the time to consider the importance of safety throughout the company. The briefings also provided an opportunity to review the past year and consider any lessons that may have been learnt. These lessons were drawn from experiences shared globally by other explosives companies, EPC Groupe companies and any incidents which may have occurred internally – all of which provided employees with a wide variety of situations from which to learn.
Ashley Haslett, head of SHEAQ (Atlantic Area) at EPC-UK, explains more: “Safety is key to everything we do in our industry and the aim of these briefings is to encourage every employee to re-engage quickly after the Christmas holiday. We considered safety from three perspectives – occupational health and safety, process safety, and behavioural safety. Doing this will ensure safety is woven into the fabric of our plant, for example machinery; processes, such as management systems; and our people, both employees and contractors.
“This year our presentations also focused on meercats and how they survive. This may sound peculiar, but meercats possess a lot of characteristics that we look for in our employees, such as maintaining a healthy unease, safety being instinctive, teamwork, effective communication about potential hazards and being 100 percent alert, 100 percent of the time.
“Safety is not a ‘buzz’ word for EPC-UK, it is intrinsic to everything we do, every day of the year. We are constantly looking at how we can remove hazards, and where that is not possible, reducing the risks which may arise from them. We hope these briefings will arm our employees with all of the tools they need to be safer and more productive in the working environment.”
