Creating Value with the Future in Mind - Anglo American South Africa

investing in our people safety
01 On Global Safety day
on 26 November,
employees at Kumba‘s
Sishen mine queue to
make their commitment
to Anglo American’s
‘Real safety begins with
me’ initiative.
02 Sishen mine production
coordinators Tebogo
Ntatudi and Hetta du
Plessis in the central
control room monitoring
the mine’s collisionavoidance
system.
03 Operator David Gómez,
in Copper’s El Soldado’s
solvent-extraction
electro-winning plant.
Safety journey model
Basic
Reactive
Compliant
Resilient
Proactive
01
Our current suite of Group safety
programmes focuses on issues that
will improve our level of maturity.
These programmes link to the
23 journey-model elements and
involve: operational risk management;
learning from incidents; risk and
change management; leadership;
developing people; leading indicators;
corporate safety work streams; supply
chain safety initiatives; integrating
safety throughout the business; and
the 2012 safety leadership summit. All
operations have safety improvement
plans that prioritise these elements
based on operational risk and help
us put plans in place to move further
along the journey model.
The operational risk management
and learning from incidents (LFI)
programmes in particular have
the potential to make a profound
impact on our long-term safety
performance. Progress on
leadership, risk- and changemanagement,
and supply chain
safety initiatives is also highlighted
in the following paragraphs.
Integrated risk management
An integrated approach to operational
risk management is vital to improving
both safety and operational
performance. The Anglo American
operational risk management process
(ORMP), which is based on our
award-winning Safety Risk
Ensuring that
our managers
and directors
regularly visit
our operations
and play a
visible role in
daily activities
is an ongoing
drive. Our
leaders try
to foster a
culture where
employees at
all levels feel
empowered to
engage freely
on safety
matters.
Management Programme, ensures
we take a common approach to
operational risk management and
that the development of associated
skills has been incorporated into our
Group integrated risk management
standard. We are building capacity at
both business unit and operational
levels by training risk-assessment
facilitators as part of our risk
management work stream.
Learning from incidents
One of our key safety principles is
‘no repeats’. It is only through
understanding what happened and
why it occurred, and by identifying and
taking preventative action, that we are
able to avert similar incidents. During
the year we strengthened the way
we investigate and report incidents.
We have developed communication
material to guide our (LFI) processes,
supported by training sessions.
Encouragingly, we are seeing an
increase in the use of the components
of LFI, particularly in the quality
of investigation and reporting of
incidents, and in the development
and maintenance of better controls.
Risk and change management
During 2011, 46 independent
site-safety reviews were led by our
internal risk and assurance team to
assess compliance with fundamental
aspects of safety management. The
general outcomes of the reviews were
reported at Board and executive levels
and the specific lessons were shared
with operations. Every operation has
committed to an action plan to address
gaps. Progress against these will be
reviewed regularly and is already
included in business unit CEO
performance targets and will, from
2013 onwards, influence, for all
executives and managers throughout
the Group, the element of remuneration
that is performance-based.
Leadership
We held Group Safety Leadership
Summits in 2011 and 2012 to
emphasise the important role that
leadership and accountability play in
making safety part of all our decisions
and actions. Ensuring that our
managers and directors regularly visit
our operations and play a visible role in
daily activities is an ongoing drive. Our
leaders try to foster a culture where
employees at all levels feel empowered
to engage freely on safety matters.
Leading indicators
Acting on the outcomes of our
strategic safety review, we are
becoming more proactive in
anticipating and pre-empting
potential incidents by using global
safety ‘leading’ performance
indicators, which are now reported
on routinely to the Board and the
Executive Committee.
46 Anglo American plc Sustainable Development Report 2012