Timmins Kidd Operations, Glencore wins President’s Award from Workplace Safety North
On September 19 in North Bay, Ontario, the provincial occupational health and safety expert for forestry, mining, and paper, printing, and converting sectors recognized the commitment of companies to the prevention of illness and injury at its inaugural Workplace Excellence awards.
Workplace Safety North President Candys Ballanger-Michaud presented an award to Kidd Operations - Glencore during the annual general meeting and awards dinner. The Timmins-based operation which includes a mine and a mill was honoured for its contribution to building safe and healthy workplaces in Ontario.
“Everyone’s really proud of the win,” says Tom Semadeni, General Manager of Kidd Operations. “It’s really icing on the cake because earlier this year we won the John T. Ryan national safety trophy for the best safety performance for a Canadian metal mine. So it’s further reinforcement that we’re on the right track.
“I think it’s great to promote success in the area of safety. A lot of times, businesses have a tendency to notice and follow up on things that are going badly or wrong, but you need to recognize success, not only internally but also publicly. Being recognized with awards like this one demonstrates to our employees and external stakeholders that we have a strong commitment to on-going improvement in our safety performance.”
Unique challenges at world’s deepest base metal mine
“The mine’s been in operation since 1966 so it’s older by some standards and that creates some challenges because we’re working with a mix of older infrastructure as well as new,” says Semadeni. “We’re the deepest base metal mine in the world – the deepest place you can get to in the earth’s crust – and that creates its own set of challenges, such as with logistics, transportation and supervision of people over vast distances. There are about 1,200 people including contractors working on two different sites: we’re a mine and a mill separated by about 30 kilometres and there’s a train that runs in between, so that’s kind of unusual for a mine.
“That also makes it a bit more challenging from a management point of view because you’re basically dealing with two sites I have to get to both places because I believe an important aspect in safety is visible leadership. You need to be present and available and making a difference in the workplace. It’s a bit of a challenge for us and I think that’s why it’s so important to have good systems in place.
“That’s what I like about your awards; you’ve established some measurement criteria, a view of the key ingredients to achieving good safety performance. You have to believe there’s a cause-and-effect relationship with safety, that it’s not just luck, but that if you have all the proper ingredients in place, you will end up with good safety results. I think that’s one of the things we’ve come to realize over the years: we need to have all the right systems in place and then have a way of auditing the systems to make sure that they’re effective.
Every operation is different
“There are two aspects of benchmarking that are important,” notes Semadeni. “One is that you should be improving relative to yourself. Sometimes it is difficult to compare yourself to others because every operation is different. So I think the aspect of the award where you need to demonstrate year-on-year improvement is important. Because the most important thing is to be able to prove to yourself that you are improving your own operation – because the rest of the world moves around and you can’t control that, but you can control your own destiny, your own operation.
“The second part of that is having the best practices or measurement criteria to self-audit against. Hopefully, again, you can demonstrate to yourself that you are improving. So if you don’t win one year, well, through the course of the next year, you understand why and where your gaps were, and work to improve in those areas, then measure yourself again and see if you have improved.”
A safety report card for companies
“We send our kids to school and they get report cards and get assessed against criteria. I think it’s useful for organizations to do that same type of thing– like a safety report card.
“Changing human behaviour and changing our habits are hard,” adds Semadeni. “It takes a lot of hard work to improve safety, so I think a validation of that work is a great feeling. It’s a great source of pride when you can see that all your hard work is paying off.”
There were two President’s Awards handed out at the annual general meeting and awards dinner: Kidd Operations – Glencore for the mining sector, and Kruger Inc. Packaging, Brampton Division for the paper, printing, and converting sector.
“There is a need to recognize the efforts of workplaces that choose to make safety a priority. Our members deserve special recognition when they demonstrate a strong commitment to ensuring that every worker goes home safe and healthy,” says WSN CEO Candys Ballanger-Michaud. “The recipients and all the nominees represent positive examples of companies working hard to make work safe.”
Earlier this year, 20 companies received a Workplace Excellence Award, recognizing workplace excellence in health and safety.
Workplace Excellence Award Winners
• Alex MacIntyre & Associates, Kirkland Lake, ON
• AuRico Gold Young - Davidson Mine, Matachewan, ON
• Barrick Williams Mine, Marathon, ON
• Black Hawk Drilling Ltd., ON contract via Smithers, BC
• Boart Longyear, Haileybury and North Bay, ON
• Cementation Canada Inc., North Bay, ON
• DMC Mining Services, Richmond Hill, ON
• Domtar, Dryden Mill, Dryden, ON
• Goldcorp Red Lake Gold Mines, Balmertown, Red Lake, ON
• Imerys Talc Canada Inc., Timmins, ON
• J.S. Redpath Ltd., North Bay, ON
• Kidd Operations: A Glencore Company, Timmins, ON
• Kirkland Lake Gold Inc., Kirkland Lake, ON
• Kruger Inc. Brampton Division, Brampton, ON
• SCR Mines Technology Inc., Sudbury, ON
• Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations: A Glencore Company, Sudbury, ON
• Technica Mining, Sudbury, ON
• Tembec - Kapuskasing Operations, Kapuskasing, ON
• The Central Group, Mississauga, ON
• Tonolli Canada Ltd., Mississauga, ON
