Intense focus on workplace safety is paying off with a steady decline in the number of people getting hurt on the job, Josh Olmsted said during a recent virtual town hall with employees in the Americas organization.
Total injuries are down, as is the rate at which injury-related incidents occur, said Olmsted, President and Chief Operating Officer-Americas. He was joined during the hour-long session by Stacey Koon, Vice President, Corporate Health and Safety, and Steve Higgins, Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer.
A campaign was launched last May asking every employee to recommit to working safely and ensure their coworkers do the same. Since then, the rate of recordable incidents has steadily declined. The last three months of 2023 comprised the best quarter of the year.
“Every quarter we got better,” Olmsted said. “Obviously we had challenges through the year but that downward trend continued and finished strong. Now the challenge, as is always the case, is to continue that performance and that focus.
“If there is a downside to the safety performance in 2023, other than the poor start, it’s the continuing challenges we’ve had with respect to high-risk events. We kind of flattened out during the third and fourth quarter. We’ve got to continue to manage that high-risk work to make sure we don’t have those types of events going forward.”
Aside from safety, other topics covered include fourth-quarter and year-end production performance, which Olmsted described as a “struggle,” and efforts the company is making to streamline the hiring process for new employees. The town hall was viewed online by about 3,300 employees.
Incidents decline across categories
As with prior town halls, safety was the dominant topic. Of particular note is the steep declines in the past year of safety incidents involving workers in categories that are particularly injury prone. Those are workers with less than three years on the job; those who work for a supervisor with less than three years of management experience; and those in certain jobs – laborers, trainees and equipment operators – that tend to have the highest incident rates.
A year ago, about 90 percent of injury-related incidents involved someone in one of those three categories. All three factors were present in 21 percent of cases. Since then, there has been a 13 percent reduction in the injury rate of employees with less than three years on the job, a 25 percent reduction for those who work for supervisors new to management and a 16 percent reduction in injuries involving certain jobs, which include laborers, trainees and equipment operators.
Koon credited that success to the sites focusing on upskilling supervision, improving onboarding and listening to feedback, which helped strengthen their ability to adopt the safety culture.
“It’s all of you out in the field having meaningful conversations with folks, being clear about our expectations to work safely, holding ourselves and our co-workers accountable for using safe work practices,” Koon said. “That’s what results in us sending our people home safe every single day.”
Despite the improvements, there was an increase last year in high-risk events, those that have the potential to result in death or serious injury, Koon said. That is unacceptable and the priority in 2024 will be to minimize those.
Particularly troubling is that in 2023 there were 30 potentially fatal events, which are incidents where the consequence could have been death even if no one was hurt. That is a significant increase from 2022.
“Thirty people could have been killed last year, and when you think about that and put that in perspective, that’s not where we can be,” Koon said. “There is a serious opportunity to really improve our focus on high risk.”
Koon added that employees already have proven they can channel the necessary effort to focus on those high-risk incidents.
During the question-and-answer portion of the town hall, Koon stressed the key to success is every employee taking responsibility for ensuring a job is safe before it begins. Any worker who believes there is a safety hazard has not only the right but the obligation to stop work until it is made safe.
Bolstering employee support
Hiring and retaining employees has been a challenge that has both safety and productivity implications, Olmsted said in response to an employee question about staffing. Employees with less than three years on the job comprise about a quarter of the company’s workforce in the United States.
Reducing the time it takes to recruit, hire, train and get new workers on the job is a priority this year, Olmsted said. There also will be follow-through to help them get the training and support they need to advance their careers.
Freeport does have a reputation of being a good company to work for, Higgins said. While it is a struggle to fill some positions, especially at certain sites, overall voluntary turnover for the company in North America is about 8 percent annually compared with an industry average of almost 30 percent, he said.
The effort to ensure the company is best supporting its workforce is captured in the 2024 strategic themes. The overarching goal for the Americas this year is, “We SAFELY achieve our targets by being the BEST AT THE BASICS.” Under that umbrella, this year’s themes include: Leach to the Last Drop, Maintenance & Reliability, Employee Experience and Execute for Value.
In response to other questions raised by employees:
Olmsted said work is ongoing at Bagdad to define and build the infrastructure needed to convert to autonomous haul trucks at the site. A new dispatch system is being implemented. The technology needed for autonomous haulage is being added to trucks as they are being rebuilt. It’s all building toward the goal of going live with the autonomous system at Bagdad in mid to late 2025.
Economic factors such as declines in the volatile copper price and increases in costs have prompted the slowdown of some expansion projects. Those include plans to double capacity at Bagdad and possibly build a water desalination plant at El Abra in Peru. Planning and engineering work continues behind the scenes on those and other projects that have been delayed, Olmsted said.
Despite challenges related to production shortfalls and increased costs in 2023, there were bright spots. Leach to the Last Drop produced 144 million pounds of copper last year, including 47 million pounds in the fourth quarter. The initiative is expected to produce 200 million pounds of additional copper this year at a cost of about $1.30 per pound.
By focusing on the basics of safely producing the right copper at the right time and the right cost, the company is well positioned in 2024 and to meet long-term demand, Olmsted said.