Changing behaviors and transforming the safety culture at one of the world’s largest biotech sites
Embracing an Incident and Injury-Free™ (IIF™) safety culture resulted in a measurable, sustained safety improvement for Pfizer Grange Castle
1600%
Increase in positive safety interventions in three years
Challenge
Located in Dublin, Ireland, Pfizer Grange Castle is one of the largest biotech sites in the world. More than 1,000 people work at the site, which includes five manufacturing suites, a warehouse, quality control, development and technical services laboratories, and engineering and utilities facilities. Pfizer’s primary focus was on increasing performance measured through business performance metrics. As a relatively new, growing site, priorities were working towards developing quality systems, bringing in new products, and maximizing results despite a steep organizational learning curve.
The Incident and Injury-Free initiative started in 2009. At the time, safety performance was good, but there were several areas for improvement. Grange Castle had attained a certain level of safety proficiency but site managers were finding it difficult to make more than minor improvements in the overall safety culture, there were challenges around employee ownership of safety, and people were still getting hurt.
Solution
Working with the Pfizer Grange Castle site leadership team, JMJ shared a blueprint for safety performance transformation:
- Provided the leadership team with support for implementing Incident and Injury-Free and creating a clear safety message that could be shared throughout the site
- Delivered workshops, coaching and mentoring of the leadership team to help ensure the success of the safety program
- Engaged the Campus Leadership Team (CLT) by:
- Appointing an EHS leader from the team to influence their peers
- Establishing a leadership team specifically for the IIF program
- The CLT highlighted that the underlying reason for caring about safety was to ensure employees were cared for as people—not just to meet the safety metric
The engagement identified underlying issues within the organization that were impeding safety progress. There was a general perception that there was little risk on the site. By identifying that risks did exist, IIF practices allowed for proper actions to be taken to address them.
Client Goals
- Improve safety performance and the overall safety culture
- Reduce safety incidents and, ultimately, operate without incidents or injuries
- Improve personal connections to safety, moving beyond the production schedule to take a more holistic approach
- Increase overall personal accountability for safety throughout the site
At the end of the day, safety and being Incident and Injury-Free is symptomatic of how people behave. If we decide to apply those same behaviors and principles to how we work, it forms a key part of a high-performance culture, which is where we’re heading next.
JMJ helped us to take safety more seriously as a leadership team, to walk the walk more than we had been doing.
Results
Before the IIF approach was implemented, the site had a primarily rules and compliance-based safety program. Within a year, it reached a ‘tipping point’ as 96% of the site’s population completed IIF orientation. As a result, a shift in safety culture took place. Internal surveys revealed that over the course of three years there was a marked improvement in how employees felt appreciated and cared for within their organization.
The program continued to have an impact over the following two years, with other departments taking note of the effectiveness of IIF, spreading awareness and engaging workers. Grange Castle began expanding the principles of IIF to transform performance, health and well-being, and production quality.
Key takeaways
- Committing to an IIF culture can take safety performance and culture to the next level
- In a complex working environment leadership may be unaware of underlying safety risks
- Understanding internal an external perspectives can help you broaden your approach to safety
Increase in positive safety interventions
From 387 to 6,627 in three years
96% completed IIF orientation
Site reached a tipping point as 96% of the population completed IIF orientation
Total Injury Rate decreases
TIR decreased from 0.6 to 0.32 in three years