Coaching Initiative Helps Chemical Company Achieve Goal of Injury-Free Work Environment

The Situation

A major nitrogen products manufacturing company never had exceeded 30 consecutive injury-free days in its plant operations and was struggling to improve its workplace safety performance. The company targeted an “injury-free work environment” as a strategic objective, and a leadership team comprised of more than 100 executives, managers, supervisors and safety personnel was created and charged with directing the ambitious initiative. The team identified a need to significantly modify the work behaviors of some 1,100 employees throughout the organization, and turned to CLG for design and execution assistance.

The Solution

Key segments of CLG’s proprietary engagement process were employed using our Coaching for Team Effectiveness skill-development workshops in conjunction with CLG’s Executive Coaching and Performance Coaching methodologies. A leadership team of more than 100 executives, managers, supervisors, and safety personnel were trained to pinpoint critical safe behaviors of individuals and teams. Leadership team members developed coaching action plans to help others increase their critical safe behaviors to positively impact the targeted business measures. Critical unsafe behaviors were also targeted for reduction.

Performance Coaching helped the 100 members of the leadership team implement their coaching action plans. This led to positive changes in the day-to-day performance and behavior of some 1,100 employees. Executive Coaching helped the leadership team improve their own coaching and influencing skills. It also helped them employ reinforcement-oriented coaching techniques, replacing the punitive techniques that had characterized some past approaches to improving safety.

The Results

With the successful implementation of 50+ “critical safe behavior” coaching action plans, the initiative was credited with helping the company achieve a record 185+ days of injury-free operations during CLG’s formal tracking, while the number of reportable incidents per month was reduced by more than 40 percent. Additionally, employee compliance with guidelines for wearing safety glasses increased from 70 to 99 percent, and successful safety inspections improved from 70 to 99 percent as well. Recordable OSHA incidents were reduced from the three-year average of 5.73 to 3.52 during the seven month consulting engagement.