Photo: (L to R) Richard Diggle, Stephen Crabb, James Paul, Ladan Iravanian from Tata Chemicals Europe
Congratulations to British Salt, part of Tata Chemicals Europe, for winning the 2018 EUsalt Safety Award. Ineos Enterprises were runners-up and Compass Minerals took third place, giving UK salt producers a 1-2-3 ‘clean sweep’.
The award was announced at the EUsalt General Assembly in Basel, 7-9 March 2018.
All three companies are members of the Salt Association – the UK trade association, which represents UK manufacturers of salt for domestic, catering, water-softening, industrial and de-icing uses.
Philip Burgess, Executive Director of the Salt Association, said:
“The mantra promoted by the EUsalt Safety Working Group is that safety is a value, not a priority – in recognition that priorities can change over time but values do not – and the results of the 2018 award shows that UK producers place the highest possible value on the safety of their people and of others visiting their sites.”
Stephen Crabb, Head of Operations – Salt & Sodium Bicarbonate, at British Salt, said: “British Salt are always on the lookout for innovative ideas on how to continue to have high levels of employee engagement with health and safety. We also know that the demographics of the workforce are changing. We have an increasingly technologically-savvy workforce, with the millennial generation making up an ever-increasing proportion of the population. From their feedback, it was clear that traditional training methods – the dreaded ‘Death-by-PowerPoint’ was not as effective as we want, particularly in the areas of hazard perception and appreciation.
“We generated an innovative and interactive hazard perception programme involving the use of readily available virtual reality technology. We created a 360′ video footage with a number of staged hazards but in a real workplace location.”
The video footage is replayed on a VR headset with the wearer able to navigate around the work site to hunt for hazards without actually being physically exposed to them. The headset doesn’t need a classroom and can be used individually or as part of a group session with streaming back to a smart TV.
He added: “Results are fantastic! Hazard recognition up 123%, classroom time down 75%, time (particularly useful when organising training for shift-based shopfloor operational teams) and significant positive feedback in terms of employee engagement – safety can be fun!”