“Medicine is for the people if we focus on that the profits will follow,
they always have and they always will.”
This was a quote by George W Merck, the founder of MSD, years ago. It remains an important part of the MSD and trade partner value proposition for looking after people through a unique focus on health and safety leadership. At the MSD facility in Singapore, the mission is to manufacture and pack products that keep people well, therefore, they have a significant focus on the health and safety of their trade partners, ensuring they are not harmed in anyway during the construction and commissioning of these facilities.
At the Singapore facility, Dai Dan, a principal contractor, had several near miss incidents that may have been more serious, and a few minor incidents that were causing concern. Rather than ignoring the situation, Dai Dan recognised these issues as being weak signals of potentially larger incidents and took a mature and informed approach to the situation, consulting with Fusion Safety. A request was made to do a ‘cold eye’ health check on the safety program, specifically to review their systems and structures and provide advice on where they could improve.
After the health check, Fusion concluded that, while there were minor improvements needed for the safety management system, no significant changes were required to be made. A lot of great work had been put into the system, including Dai Dan’s work on technical skills development. The challenge was not with the system and structure, or the technical competence. It appeared to be associated with both safety leadership alignment, and the ‘overseer’ style of leadership at an operational level.
Fusion suggested Dai Dan implement the HeroCODE to change this style of leadership, from a controlling leadership to a collaborative style of leadership where good ideas around health and safety are encouraged from all individuals in the organisation. Individual leaders were selected and undertook “HeroCODE for Groups” program. This program ran over a period of 4 weeks, producing some great results and feedback.
After finishing the program for the leaders, Dai Dan also introduced the HeroCODE Tactics course for teams, proving them with practical safety tools they can use each day in the field. The change to a collaborative leadership style and the introduction of the HeroCODE Tactics have seen Dai Dan continue as a Principal contractor at MSD Singapore. They have achieved 1,526,352 hours without a lost time, injury.
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