Rewriting the recipe for safety: a global food manufacturer’s transformation
A global food manufacturer faced stalled safety performance and steady injury rates within their organization. To elevate performance, the company partnered with dss+ to launch a comprehensive, company-wide initiative to improve their safety culture.
Challenge
For more than six years, a global food manufacturer faced a persistent challenge: Its safety performance had stalled, with injury rates remaining steady between 600-700 incidents each year across a workforce of more than 18,000 employees. For company leaders, these numbers were a clear signal that something had to change. Best practices were needed at every level of operational leadership, along with site-specific roadmaps to drive lasting transformational change that aligned the company culture.
dss+ Approach
To elevate performance, the food manufacturer partnered with dss+ to launch a comprehensive initiative to improve safety culture. dss+ first conducted an assessment that uncovered strategic opportunities for improvement, followed by roadmaps tailored to strengthen cultural maturity across 27 locations.
To ensure sustainability, dss+ created targeted initiatives, that included coaching sessions for frontline leaders. The goal of each session was to build competencies through a science-based, risk-informed approach to influence human behaviour and decision making. Sessions were also held for process teams to strengthen core elements of safety governance – such as incident investigation processes, quality of safety interactions, rule and procedure evaluations, and overall associate engagement in safety initiatives.
Business impact
| 10-15% decrease in average monthly recordable injuries over two years |
2,100+ fewer lost workdays |
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| 16% injury reduction |
27 sites |
18,000+ employees |
2 year transformation |
The inflection point
“Sometimes, establishing a cohesive safety vision throughout an organisation requires addressing gaps from top to bottom. Our sessions allow both process teams, leaders, and managers to speak the same language around safety so that everyone, no matter their role, works with it at the forefront of everything they do.”
- Melissa Barrett, Managing Director, Agriculture and Consumer Goods