Soft issue
on fatality prevention was critical in
achieving no fatalities for three years.
“We’ve still got a lot of work to do to make
Kumba a fatality-free company. I believe
we are getting good results with the journey
that we are on.”
Fatal prevention programme
To maintain their impressive health
and safety record, Kumba adopted the
elimination of fatalities programme. The
programme was based on the iron ore
producer’s lagging and leading indicators.
“Immediately after the 10th of May 2016,
we started rolling out the elimination of
fatalities programme,” Fourie said.
Fourie explained that lagging indicators
referred to accidents that resulted in
injuries or came close to causing an injury.
Leading indicators on the other hand,
were those which took place just before an
accident. Kumba has focused mainly on
leading indicators as a way of reducing fatal
accidents at its operations. “Since 2004, we
had one fatal every year in Kumba. Then in
2012 we had two, and then in 2016 we had
another two,” explained Fourie.
“The one big thing that we’ve done, is we
went from accident prevention to fatality
prevention.” This was done by focusing
on agencies which could potentially kill
someone. Fourie described the agencies as
factors that cause an accident such as fall
of ground, methane explosions, falling or
tripping. The severity of agencies differed,
with some being more serious than others.
Fall of ground or a methane explosion
are examples of severe agencies because
they have a higher chance of resulting in a
fatality. As such, leading indicators became
a major focus area for Kumba as part of the
fatal prevention programme.
Another important aspect of the programme
is the occurrence of high potential incidents
(HPIs), which are incidents that come very
close to causing a fatality. Kumba has been
working on reducing HPIs and are on track
as in 2016 there were 34 HPI cases reported.
The numbers came down in 2017 and 2018
with 21 and seven HPIs respectively. So far,
only one HPI incident was reported for 2019.
Although HPIs don’t result in a fatality,
Kumba treats them as fatalities to ensure
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that they do not recur. “The first thing that
we do when the incident happens, is to
close the mine so that we can find out what
went wrong before we re-open the mine,”
Fourie said. An external team will then
come and investigate the incident. Findings
of the investigation will be discussed within
the group as way of creating awareness
across all Anglo American operations
worldwide, and in so doing, avoid the
recurrence of the same or similar incidents
at other operations.
High potential hazards (HPHs) are
another focus area that is part of Kumba’s
elimination of fatalities programme. HPHs
are different to HPIs in that accidents have
yet to occur, however there are looming
hazards with the potential to cause fatal
accidents. Kumba has a strict policy in
ensuring that HPHs are reported, with
the main purpose of ensuring that they
are dealt with accordingly to avoid the
occurrence of HPIs or worse, a fatal
accident. Fourie mentioned that the
reported HPHs are recorded onto a
database, which Kumba uses to identify
areas that have high HPHs, and make the
necessary data-driven decisions. “This data
tells us exactly what to focus on,” he said.
Process of the elimination of fatalities
programme
In order to get the desired results from
the elimination of fatalities programme,
several measures were put in place. One
of them was having a safety leadership
alignment day for managers in 2017. “We
wanted every manager in Kumba to be
totally aligned to what our strategy is, and
how we are going to get to the end of our
fatality prevention strategy,” Fourie said.
Kumba executive committee members and
managers across all operations were given
extensive leadership training. The training
included attending a leadership course at
Duke University.
Managers also availed themselves on a
more personal level for heartfelt discussions
with employees. This formed part of
the visible felt leadership, where middle
and upper management would be more
visible to employees on the ground. Fourie
highlighted that the purpose of the visible
felt leadership was not to observe and
identify wrongdoing by employees, but
rather to identify and deal with problems
that could potentially lead to fatal incidents
before they occurred. This was done
through one-on-one heartfelt discussions
with employees.
Fourie did acknowledge that initially
employees were intimidated by the presence
of management in their working space,
but soon started to warm up to them. “As
we carried on with the process, the people
actually realised that management is not
there to look for problems and to look
for fault. They’re there to engage and to
listen,” he said. In 2018 middle to upper
management from Kumba Iron Ore
had 37 000 heartfelt visible leadership
conversations with employees. Managers
have a target to have at least four heartfelt
discussions a month
Another important aspect was involving
management in mine health and safety by
taking ownership. Previously safety was
the sole responsibility of safety officers,
however the responsibility was passed on
to mine managers as well. “We made sure
that we’ve got competent safety people
that can give the correct advice to mine
management,” Fourie said. One of the ways
of having management take responsibility
for safety was having them stop work
immediately if they saw anything that
could lead to a fatal accident. “We made
sure that leaders stopped the work before
anybody got hurt,” Fourie added.
Rewarding work stoppages
According to Section 23 of the Mine
Health and Safety Act, 1996, employees
have a right to leave any unsafe working
areas. “We never got any Section 23
stoppages,” Fourie explained. Upon
investigation, it was found that employees
were fearful of being victimised or losing
their jobs if they stopped work. Kumba
addressed this by making it clear that
Section 23 was a priority for all employees.
Kumba CEO Mkhwanazi personally
wrote a memo to employees in which
he explained that there would be severe
consequences if employees were victimised
when they exercise their right to stop work
when it was not safe. In addition, safe
zones were created where employees could
anonymously disclose information about
unsafe working environments. In the safe
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