Safety has always been a priority for Hudbay. Sadly, in 2021 we had an occupational fatality at the Manitoba Business Unit after two decades and more than 60 million hours worked without such an incident. Our record showed that safety was essential to the MBU; the incident showed that we had to do more.
Since 2021, the MBU has been working to understand the root causes of that incident and put in place rules, guidelines, procedures and, most importantly, an enhanced safety culture to help ensure that such a thing never happens again. Throughout 2021, we conducted internal reviews of our safety performance and engaged two leading consultancies in the risk and safety sector, to guide us on improving that performance. Additionally, with one of these firms, we undertook a comprehensive survey on safety perception that went out to all employees and contractors at Lalor, and we also did operational visits and focus groups.
The insights we gained helped shape what became our “Home Safe Every Day” (HSE) initiative. In 2022, we established a safety roadmap with three work pathways – Safety Governance, Supervisory Leadership, and High Potential Prevention and Mitigation. Our primary focus is on pre-incident and pre-event controls across these pathways and our safety system. We put most of our effort towards preventing an incident by assessing risks and establishing controls to address those risks.
Initially we targeted high-risk tasks and developed critical control validation checklists for approaching and managing those tasks. Then we went out to our workforce to ensure that these checklists were known, and test that they were being used and they worked as intended.
As we work to build a vibrant safety culture at Lalor and throughout the Manitoba Business Unit, our goal is to move along the Bradley Curve. The Bradley Curve is an industry-standard framework for evaluating an organization’s safety culture across four stages – Reactive, Dependent, Independent and Interdependent. In the Reactive stage, individuals accept that accidents will happen and don’t take responsibility for contributing to a safer environment. Progressing along the curve, we are taking steps to inform and empower our people. We aim to establish a robust and self-sustaining interdependent safety culture in which people and teams embrace shared ownership and responsibility for safety, and they believe zero workplace injuries is a realistic and attainable goal.
In 2024, we will continue to advance and strengthen our safety culture by upgrading the Safety Dashboard we introduced in 2023, employing data to direct our safety focus, and using regular engagement with shifts and crews to drive continuous improvements in safety performance.