Let's talk! Facilitating conversations about safety on the shop floor

Many good tools were implemented over the last years (training, tool box talks, SHE committee / team meetings, incident communication, etc.) and yet the greatest challenge in a fully utilised plant remained the adequate and effective communication towards and among the production workers.

To sustainably implement standard practises with production workers, aspects like frequency, timeliness and peer-to-peer environment could still be improved.

After discussion with plant managers, it became evident that shortage of time in the busy production environment as well as hesitation to leave full sight of the machines were a major hurdle for our ambition to increase the necessary exchange and information flow and to make it an integral part of plant life. Especially first-line managers, who lead into the conversations, can only step out from necessary administrative tasks for short periods of time.

To overcome the time issue, consideration of two aspects was important:

• Conversations needed to take place as close as possible to the production area – ideally in the production area.
• Conversations and exchange needed to take place in a time-effective manner. The environment should foster interactive conversations.

This raised another issue that it is too noisy for two people to communicate effectively in the production area, let alone for a group of people, therefore a quiet place in or next to the production area was needed to be created.

Based on these findings the CrS safety and health team, supported by the Continuous Improvement, Operations and Quality teams carefully evaluated the local floor situation in each plant and developed a standardized concept called “Communication Corners” that would fit all operations in the business segment, offering sufficient flexibility to accommodate a reasonable implementation time and budget.

The new spaces had been defined in terms of size, furniture, wall design, information boards and technical equipment (TV, beamer, PC, etc.). The set up and use of high tables, as well as sufficient open space to move around, provoke a focused yet interactive team behaviour. Noise levels were measured and the location on or next to the shop floor as well as constructive requirements  for sound proofing was determined in each plant.

The Engagement Board is one of the foundations of our new safety and health approach focussing on people involvement.  The Communication Corners give it a prominent place with easy accessibility, and enable the proactive use of this tool. It was proven that the more pleasant the environment and the more often spaces are populated, the more accepted they become and the more comfortable people feel to use them.

The Communication Corner concept therefore were also considered to be used for Quality, Continuous Improvement and Operations meetings, which strengthen their position as strategic meeting points for the entire of business operations.

After successful pilot installations (Swiecie in Poland, Bad Rappenau in Germany, Tire Box in Turkey), full implementation of the concept in all CrS regions was approved by the CrS OPCO from mid-2020 onwards. All 13 remaining plants are currently working on planning and installation of their Communication Corners.

In 2021, the five newly integrated Mondi Olmuksan plants got the approval to go ahead with planning the Communication Corners in 2022.