No one goes to work expecting to be injured on the job. And because no one understands potential hazards in the workplace better than the people on the job, Tundra Oil & Gas is giving employees an essential role in identifying safety concerns and preventing lost-time incidents.
“Safety has always been a deeply-ingrained part of our culture at Tundra,” says Ryan Potter, Manager of Health & Safety. “Considering how quickly we are growing, we want to emphasize the importance of safety to employees who have recently joined our company as well as reinvigorate the diligence of the rest of our employees.”
The new motto “Everyone Home Safe, Every Day” now appears on Tundra’s communication materials, work wear, protective equipment and even on company vehicles in the field – places where employees will be reminded of it on a daily basis.
“It’s a statement that grabs your attention and makes you realize that safety is not just an inward focus, it’s an outward attitude,” Potter says. “Safety is the top priority in everything we do, and we all share the responsibility of ensuring that the people around us go home safe to their families at the end of the day.”
To help convey this message, Tundra produced a powerful 90-second video which expresses that the most important part of any workday is coming home safe to the ones you love.
“Our own people are featured in the video to demonstrate how much we all have at stake and the reason why safety is part of everything we do. Our goal is to get away from safety being about rules and regulations and shift it to becoming a state of mind instead.”
Tundra maintains that business opportunities are not pursued at the sacrifice of safety, and the company continuously strives for improvement in safety and loss control performance. To assist with this, Tundra’s field employees participate in safety gatherings, which gives them a forum to bring forward any safety concerns, discuss potential issues or find solutions to ensure past incidents do not occur again.
“To make it easier and more convenient for our field operations, we’ve adjusted our format so that instead of coming in for safety gatherings, we take the meetings out to five different area offices in the field every quarter,” Potter explains.
“Working in smaller groups tends to make people feel more comfortable, which allows for more open and honest communication as we exchange ideas and review potential hazards or near-miss incidents. It ensures a good flow of information from the people out in the field who actually witness and experience these things.”
After the safety gatherings, the shared information is collected, analyzed and shared with management and staff as a way to discuss continuous improvement of safety procedures.
Potter says that this process is working effectively, pointing out Tundra’s markedly improving Total Recordable Incident Frequency (TRIF) record, which is based on 100 people working a 40-hour week over a one-year period. In 2017, Tundra and its contractors had .57 recordable incidents per 100 people working – down from .60 incidents the year before and looking back even further, 1.24 incidents per 100 people in 2010.
