Keep your eyes on the road: Prevent “in itinere” incidents

Abstract

Accidents on the road to and from the workplace are the most common type of safety incidents among Sonae Sierra’s workforce. When the number of accidents reached an unusually high level in 2013, the Sustainability Office intensified its efforts on inverting this trend. Since then, incident analysis and investigation, together with training, awareness and motivational initiatives have proved to be extremely effective in preventing incidents in itinere and reducing associated costs.

Introduction

Sonae Sierra has robust procedures in place to ensure that safety and health risks are quickly identified and prevented. All Sonae Sierra shopping centres, offices and construction sites implement the procedures defined by our Safety, Health and Environment Management System (SHEMS). We monitor and evaluate S&H performance on a regular basis and provide extensive training and awareness-raising on safety and health risks to all office and site workers and shopping centre users.

Nonetheless, our regular analyses of safety incidents occurring within our workforce revealed that over 60% of serious incidents were taking place on the way to work and back – in other words, in itinere incidents. Consequently this was also the main cause of absentee per work accident recorded in our Company. For these reasons, the Sustainability Office considered it a priority to take action to prevent these kinds of incidents.

Background

In 2013, the number of in itinere incidents reached a peak hitherto unforeseen. There were a total of 11 accidents involving Sonae Sierra employees, with seven of them classified as serious incidents. So we decided to investigate in itinere incidents in greater depth, starting with data available from 2010 onwards, to better understand the nature and impact of the trend. We found that:

• 74% of the in itinere accidents that occurred within the Sonae Sierra workforce were serious incidents, i.e. they involved lost workdays. Together, they resulted in the loss of a total of 154 workdays between 2010 and 2014.
• More than a half of the in itinere accidents occurred among employees aged between 35 and 44, and 74% were among women.
• 35% of in itinere incidents were car accidents and 39% occurred while employees were walking. More than a half of the walking accidents resulted in sprains.
• 61% of in itinere accidents occurred during the morning, when the employees were on their way to one of our corporate or shopping centre offices.
• The months of May, July, August, November and December were the ones with the highest frequency of accidents, probably related with the rainy season and the school holiday periods, when daily routines change.

Challenge

Overall, the investigation showed that our safety procedures and risk control processes could not adequately address and prevent these types of accidents and that urgent action was required to invert the trend.
The Sustainability Offices’ goal was to find a solution that would allow our Company to reduce the number of in itinere incidents among the workforce. But the challenge was how to address the external factors that increase the accident risk, namely the weather, the road conditions, the state of the pavements, visibility, etc. We have to accept that we cannot control these factors, and therefore our focus should be on employees’ behaviour.

Solution

First of all, we decided that in itinere incident prevention should be the subject of our annual World Day for Safety and Health at Work celebration. The Sustainability Office organized a quiz where the workforce was invited to identify, in just a matter of seconds, risky situations that could lead to in itinere accidents.
We knew that the campaign by itself would not be enough to solve the problem. So we started to envisage a more engaging action plan that would include permanent initiatives to make our workforce aware of these risks all year round.
The action plan we created included the following initiatives:

• Development of training contents (video) about in itinere incident prevention and its inclusion in the induction training for all new employees.
• Organization of a webinar, open to the entire company, where the above mentioned statistics were presented, together with safety tips on how to prevent these incidents. Those tips were given by colleagues (rather than experts) so that employees immediately felt that their behaviour would be easy to replicate.
• Posting a sticker on each office door to raise awareness and encourage action to prevent in itinere incidents.
• Installation of a ‘days counter’ on the Sonae Sierra intranet which counts the number of days without an in itinere accident. This allows all workers to know how frequently these incidents occurred and to motivate them in helping each other to prevent incidents.

Following the campaign, there has been a significant reduction in the number of in itinere accidents occurring among the Sonae Sierra workforce. Compared to 2013, in 2016 there were:

• 64% fewer in itinere accidents overall.
• 86% fewer serious in itinere accidents.
• 98% fewer lost workdays from in itinere accidents.

By calculating the average cost per accident, we estimate that Sonae Sierra avoided costs of €17,930 in 2016 due to the decrease in the number of in itinere accidents since 2013.

Closure

This case study demonstrates that having a non-negotiable goal to minimise accidents, a high level of staff commitment and comprehensive safety procedures in place can bring about significant reductions in the number of incidents occurring, even in areas where direct risk prevention is outside of our control. By striving to find a new solution to a recurring problem, Sonae Sierra has not only increased the safety of its workforce, but also reduced costs related with workers’ absenteeism.