ABSTRACT:
In June of 1999, as part of its Knowledge Management
initiative Rio Tinto, one of the world’s leading mining
companies, commissioned an intranet web site on safety issues.
The site has turned out to be a very successful vehicle for
sharing learnings from safety incidents, collecting and sharing
statistics on safety performance throughout the group, and
communicating safety policy and standards. It has also raised
expectations that similar results can be achieved in other
aspects of Rio Tinto’s operations. This article relates Rio
Tinto’s experiences in implementing this knowledge sharing
web site in the context of a pilot knowledge management
programme, and analyses the factors that have made it successful.
1. Context
1.1 The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts?
Rio Tinto is one of the world’s
largest mining companies, with operations in the USA, Canada,
Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, UK, Norway, Portugal, France,
Austria, Italy, Sardinia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India,
Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. It employs over 30,000
people world wide, plus contractors, and has annual gross
turnover of around US$10bn. In the face of globalisation and an
increasingly competitive commodity market, the company is always
keen to utilise the competitive advantage that comes from its
size and diversity.
Of course, with size and geographic spread
come challenges also – How does the left hand know what the
right is doing? How can the company’s activities be
coordinated? How can it take advantage of its large intellectual
capital base? Best practices have been developed throughout the
group, but how can the company (and its employees) know what
these are, who the experts are, and how to access them?
1.2 The Knowledge Management Initiative
Improvements in telecommunications, and in
particular the rise of web technology, held out the promise of
solving these problems and harnessing the company’s global
resources, human and other. This belief led to the development of
Rio Tinto’s Knowledge Management initiative.
It began with a small group of
knowledge-based systems specialists and software engineers
located in Perth, Western Australia. The team was enhanced by
recruiting individuals with skills in knowledge management and
organisational change. Since this was a “bottom-up”
initiative, several pilot projects were selected to demonstrate
the potential of knowledge management to senior managers. In
parallel with the development of knowledge processes and
strategies, a pilot intranet and portal known as K-Link
(Knowledge Link) was established as a delivery platform.
1.3 The Safety Programme
The Knowledge Management initiative was in
part a response to the drive for Best Practice sharing from the
former Chief Executive, Leon Davis. Another major drive from Mr
Davis was for improved safety performance throughout the group.
The Chief Executive’s office, together with the Head of
HS&E, Alan Emery, sought help from the Knowledge Management
team, who suggested using K-Link to improve the distribution of
Safety Notices to safety representatives at operating sites. This
article relates Rio Tinto’s experiences in implementing this
knowledge sharing solution.
2. A New Way To Share Safety Learnings
2.1 Safety Notices Web Site
Safety Notices were already being
collected centrally and distributed via mail, e-mail or faxes. A
Safety Notice is a record detailing a safety related incident
that has taken place within the Rio Tinto group. These details
must be recorded as part of the procedure for dealing with any
serious incident, and optionally for less serious ones.
Occasionally, a Safety Notice might be used to pass on general
safety advice or relate an incident that has taken place outside
the group. The intention behind distributing Notices is to share
learnings and prevent re-occurrences of similar incidents.
Initially, the question had to be asked
– What’s wrong with the old way? The KM team believed
that a web-based solution could revitalise and enhance the old
process. The old idea was good – but the team thought it
could be done better. Some concrete benefits were readily
apparent - faster distribution, a single authoritative source, a
streamlining of the process – others were less tangible, a
glimmer in the eye – like a “feeling of
involvement” and a higher profile for safety and for the
HS&E unit. In the end, a leap of faith was required.
The initial release of the web site was
built around the collection and communication of Safety Notices.
Nominated users at each Rio Tinto operating site were given the
ability to enter and edit Safety Notices on line. All users were
able to browse existing Notices by date, business unit, incident
location or type of activity, and to search for Notices using
keywords. Administrators were given the ability to modify or hide
any Notice, as a safeguard against unintended confidentiality or
legal problems, or malicious misuse, none of which has occurred.
Some existing policy and guideline documents were also made
available, and a bulletin board was provided.
Each Safety Notice contains details under
the headings of What happened, Where it happened, What were the
causes, What has been done about it as well as optional digital
photographs, and contact details for further information. The
emphasis is on giving enough information so that management
together with safety professionals and business unit
representatives can take steps to prevent similar incidents in
the future. This could mean a change to equipment or procedures,
or more commonly, first line management or the safety
representative would use the Notice as an illustration to
reinforce the safety message. This is often done in the course of
regular “toolbox talks”.
2.2 Management Support
Participation in the use of the web site
was strongly driven by senior management. This high-level drive
was critical in overcoming initial apathy and even hostility
towards the idea, which was seen by some as unnecessary corporate
interference in their operations. There is also a natural
reluctance to admit to making mistakes, by submitting Notices. To
counter this, it is important that submitting a Notice is
recognised as a valuable contribution to Rio Tinto’s (and
the operation’s) safety effort, and senior management must
consistently reinforce this message. Some operating sites had
very poor Internet access when the web site was first launched
(some remote locations still do), and strong pressure was helpful
in encouraging operations and beleaguered IT departments to take
steps to improve their access.
2.3 Embedding Within Work Processes
An early enhancement to the web site was
the ability for users to subscribe to the Safety Notices service.
Subscribers receive regular advice by e-mail about new Safety
Notices, and can choose to get full descriptions, or shorter
descriptions and a hyperlink to the full version on line. This
benefits individual users - they do not have to constantly check
the web site for updates, and yet they can be assured that they
will be advised about any new incidents that might be important
to them in their roles.
Following the success of the initial
implementation, the web site is constantly being enhanced. The
site will now be used to collect, combine and distribute safety
statistics from the operations. The bulletin board has not been
well used to date, and it is being enhanced so as to improve its
usage. The amount of information available to assist management
on site is growing. The site is becoming an identifiable
“one-stop shop” for safety issues within Rio Tinto.
3. Benefits
3.1 Improved Performance
The proof of the pudding, of course, is in
whether safety performance has improved. And the good news is
that it has. As of June 2000, LTI’s (lost-time injuries) are
down 33% on the same period for 1999. The total of all injuries
is down 24%, and the number of shifts lost is down 29%. The graph
shows monthly LTI figures, as a percentage of target, from July
1999 to June 2000.
What part of this improvement can be
attributed to the web site is impossible to say, as there have
been other developments in the safety drive at the same time, but
there is a good deal of anecdotal evidence from users, in the
form of responses to a request for feedback to demonstrate the
value of the system. Responses were received from about half the
active users of the web site. Of these, 77% gave a positive
assessment of the site and its effectiveness in their
organization. The number of active users has been steadily
growing, with a 32% increase from March to April, and a 63%
increase from April to May. The number of Safety Notices posted
in the first half of 2000 was already 70% of the total for the
whole of 1999, despite the reduction in the LTI figures.
We hypothesise that the improved
performance comes in part through
·
More reporting of incidents and a faster, wider distribution of
learnings leading to reduced repetition of unsafe acts and
conditions;
·
Enhanced safety awareness leading to greater adherence to safety
principles.
3.2 Added Benefits
There are additional benefits aside from
improved safety performance and a reduction in lost time. The
whole process of collecting safety information from sites is
being streamlined. For example, new Safety Notices are available
globally as soon as they are entered on site, removing delays,
repeated data entry and handling costs. As a bonus, the data are
immediately available in electronic form, for further processing,
analysis and reporting.
An unplanned consequence of the launch of
the site has been to catalyse the improvement of
telecommunications access throughout the group. This makes other
benefits of improved communication available to the company. In
fact, partly as a result of the success of Safety Notices and
other K-Link web sites, a true global intranet is in the process
of being implemented. This will greatly improve the performance
and availability of existing internal web sites and other
services, and opens up technology options such as e-commerce,
desktop videoconferencing and workflow solutions for the future.
As a knowledge management pilot, the
project has been a very valuable trailblazer, demonstrating the
value of knowledge sharing and the viability of web sites as an
enabling technology. The success of this and other pilots has
resulted in a well-received presentation to the Operations
Committee of Rio Tinto, proposing a coordinated knowledge
management strategy for the Rio Tinto group.
4. Learnings
There were many potential barriers to the
success of the project. The Rio Tinto corporate culture has a
clear bottom line business focus. Low commodity prices mean that
the minerals sector worldwide is very concerned with cost
reduction. The operating businesses are feeling the squeeze and
are not receptive to any potentially distracting influences. The
geographical challenges are considerable. The existing IT
infrastructure was patchy and IT support was uncertain. Any one
of these could easily have derailed the project.
The key factors in overcoming these
barriers were alignment with company strategy, and determined
high-level support. Without these, the project, for all its
merit, would have fallen at the first hurdle.
Once it was clear that operating business
units would cooperate, other factors became important. The web
site had to be well designed, easy to use and it had to work.
Little user training was needed, since the user interface is
completely web browser based and quite intuitive. The
subscription service made it easy for users to align their use of
the web site with the requirements of their roles, rather than
being an extra thing for them to remember and find time to do.
Interestingly, a common way for site HS&E representatives to
make use of the site is to print Safety Notices and distribute
them on site notice boards and at safety “toolbox
talks”, further enhancing knowledge transfer. Features like
the inclusion of photographs make the Notices more graphic and
help to give a feeling of being “real”, rather than
removed from everyday experience. These factors help users to
feel part of a community and encourage them to contribute to it.
Other companies and agencies are also
having success with safety knowledge sharing. For example, Dupont
have been developing SHE networks, and have had a similar
experience (visit
http://www.dupont.com/safety/esn99-2/shenetwork.html). According
to SHE Advantage Program manager, Lucy Rusidell, "Safety,
Health and Environment has been spearheading the networks
process, but what we've been doing can be transferred to other
functions and SBUs. It's just a matter of issues and need."
Chevron set up a safety-sharing network, SafeNet, as part of its
knowledge management program, reporting a 50% performance
improvement since 1993. The US Department of Energy has recently
launched an Internet portal for safety (go to
http://tis.eh.doe.gov/portal/KsmlinkReg.htm), which “creates
a "knowledge-sharing" environment where users can
participate interactively in forums, report on corrective actions
being taken to resolve safety issues and register for
environment, safety and health (ES&H) training. In addition
users can check calendars for upcoming events related to ISM and
consult electronic locators to identify available departmental
experts in the many ES&H disciplines and topic areas. This
feature, called the Knowledge Management Tool, helps users
benefit more fully from the collective knowledge of the complex
by placing powerful collaborative and research-oriented tools at
their fingertips.”
Certainly, the Rio Tinto Safety Notices
web site has demonstrated that knowledge management techniques
can enhance corporate safety programs. This gives every reason to
believe that in the future good knowledge management practice
will add to Rio Tinto’s success in other important
operational areas.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The
author would like to thank Rio Tinto PLC’s Technology Group,
for assistance in preparing and permission to publish this work.
I would especially like to thank those who worked on the Safety
Notices project.