May 4, 2022
Communication is key to safety improvements in Ljusne, Sweden
In May, Quant Safety Week 2022 is held. Aiming at improving and strengthening our safety culture even further, various activities are arranged during the event. At Quant’s site in Ljusne, Sweden, several improvements related to safety have been made during the last years. According to Site Manager Kurt Rudolphi, good communication is an important factor behind the success.
– No task is so urgent that we cannot perform it safely, he says.
The theme for this year’s Quant Safety Week is Raise your hand, which is a is a principle empowering everyone in Quant to exercise their right to stop and report unsafe work, conditions, or acts. At the Quant site in Ljusne, Sweden, there is a strong safety culture when it comes to stopping jobs due to potential safety risks. According to Site Manager Kurt Rudolphi, good communication is key.
– It is all about communication, having a good dialogue with your employees. Talking about why these things are important and why we should work in a certain way, he says.
He thinks that also the communication between employees has improved and he has noticed that safety is discussed more often during lunch breaks and similar. There have also been situations where employees have stopped a job for safety reasons on their own initiative.
– I would say that is proof that we have a strong safety culture and that our employees think about the safety, Kurt says.
– We also see it when it comes to reported risk observations. The quality of the risk observations is good, which I see as a sign that we have understood why we are doing things in a certain way.
”No task is so urgent that we cannot perform it safely”
There are 31 Quant employees working in Ljusne. According to Kurt, the biggest risks with working on this site are that quite many jobs are performed at heights, and also the traffic. There are many large trucks with heavy loads driving within the site area, which entails a risk of falling objects from the forks. In addition to good communication, pre-work risk assessments is another important factor behind good safety.
– The risk assessment is very important, not least in the sense that you put your hand in your pocket for a while. That you stop and think about what potential risks there are with the job. It is the last chance to make corrections before you start solving the task, Kurt says.
He sees a big difference in today’s safety work compared to when he started working in the industry in the 80’s.
– Everything you did in the 80’s was not wrong, but there was still a kind of macho culture back then. Some ways of working were accepted in a way that they would not be today, and back then it was also important that the work was completed quickly. Today it is not like that, instead everyone wants work to be performed in a safe way, he says.
– That is also a mantra that I use repeatedly; No task is so urgent that we cannot perform it safely.
