Anglo American SHE Policy

Kristina Miller, Principal, S&SD (Safety and Sustainable Development) Management Systems and Assurance at Anglo American, shared how a recent project with Jincom to visualise and animate the company’s Safety, Health and Environment Policy is already making a difference.

Jincom was commissioned to create two videos for Anglo American. The first is a 4-minute, 30-second video for the rebranding of the Group Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) Policy. The second is a 2-minute-long video explaining the SHE Policy Accountability and Responsibility.

The videos are bringing considerable benefits including significantly reducing the time needed for mandatory training, demonstrating the wide-ranging impact of safety, health and environmental incidents and helping to frame narratives around future thinking.‍

Reduced training time ‍

Kristina explained how the animated videos have significantly reduced the time it takes employees to complete mandatory training.

The videos are available on the company’s intranet, Eureka!, and are designed in segments to enable them to be incorporated into mandatory training which is being rolled out from October 2021 across the global workforce of 63,000.

Training which previously took up to an hour now can be completed during a 15-minute coffee break. “You watch the video, it gives you three key points you need to know. And then you have a knowledge check. So a video segment, a little blurb of text, and a knowledge check, repeated a few times and you're done. That is incredible.”

‍“If I tell people, they can get it done in 15 minutes, they’ll say, ‘Cool. I'll have a cup of coffee. And I'll quickly do it before my next meeting’',”.

The training is for every connected and non-connected employee with the latter attending training workshops run by their managers on site and completing knowledge checks in-person. “That's when those videos are also going to be so helpful because they won’t have to stand and listen to someone talk for an hour.”

‍Framing future thinking

Kristina described how the videos help to guide the conversation around continuous improvement and future thinking.

“We were looking at what's in the policy but we also know that things like the circular economy and renewable energy were definitely on the scorecard.”

Feedback has been very positive with operational managers reporting that the videos are helping them to communicate the narrative of continuous improvement.

“If you listen to the words in the video we're talking about continuous improvement, ‘you should always strive to be better than you were yesterday’, which is a simple concept.

“But it’s not only reviewing a procedure or making sure that we got the report in on time, it's about what we are going to do in the future. How do we plan to be better in the future from where we are right now? That was really key.”

Safety is crucial but don’t forget the ‘H’ and ‘E’

Kristina agreed that when it comes to SHE, safety is often the priority and health and environment can be overlooked.

She referred to a segment in the SHE Policy Accountability and Responsibility video that features a worker trying to clean up a chemical spill.

‍“With one four-second animation, we were able to share that one mistake doesn't just affect the operation; it impacts the community, it impacts the environment. The ability to communicate that visually is what our SHE practitioners look for.”

“The spill flows into a river and the river runs downstream to a community who are then also struggling with the impact of that spill. With one four-second animation, we were able to share that one mistake doesn't just affect the operation; it impacts the community, it impacts the environment. The ability to communicate that visually is what our SHE practitioners look for.”

Kristina was impressed by the attention to detail and the care the animators took to convey the critical messages through images.

“The animators did a phenomenal job. If you watch the video, there’s a section with little kiddies playing near the river. There was no direction in that instance from me at so I was really impressed by the thought that went into how this impacts people.”

Kristina has also received very positive feedback about the video and its ability to demonstrate the broader impact of a small incident.

‍“One simple small action can have such a huge and diverse impact”

“It's getting people to realise “Oh, wait, hold on. I can't just go ‘oh quick wipe it up.’ Everything I do has a knock-on effect. One simple small action can have such a huge and diverse impact. And so that's the kind of feedback I'm getting: That it’s so impactful.”

SOURCES:

2019 - Anglo American has 63,000 employees as per the following report