Our efforts over the last five to six years have helped us in establishing good OH&S organisation and standards. However, disappointing OH&S performance in 2013 made us introspect seriously and carry out a detailed management review. These actions highlighted the following focus areas: Real on-ground implementation Making OH&S a way of life rather than a functional obligation Demonstrating OH&S commitment by living the ideal Engaging and motivating people at all levels to contribute to OH&S performance Based on this analysis, we kick-started the ‘We Care’ initiative to transform our OH&S culture. Although we did significant work in establishing good OH&S standards and organisation over the last five to six years, we found significant gaps in implementation on the ground. We have significant complexity of operations with 17 operating plants/ sites and about 15,000 people, most of whom are not adequately literate and have a culturally poor OH&S mindset. The lack of an OH&S mindset in the communities around us also posed a challenge. We felt that the best way to deal with this was to sensitise and engage with our people emotionally. They would form the building blocks of Ambuja’s OH&S transformation journey. At the same time, we would work with subject experts to prioritise and address all issues related to unsafe conditions and unsafe acts, since both are equally important. To address these challenges and transform our OH&S culture, we kick-started the ‘We Care’ initiative which is a big change management programme. The primary objective of this initiative is to achieve our OH&S ambitions by making it a people’s movement.

We believed that this can be possible only when we connect and engage with every single person entering our sites. To this end, we reinforced the idea that OH&S is primarily line-accountability; and we were able to achieve the right balance between people, engineering solutions, and OH&S systems. Thus, through the ‘We Care’ initiative, we were able to create the right organisation and processes to achieve our OH&S ambitions. In the ‘We Care’ programme, each plant is divided into small manageable geographical areas called ‘zones’. Each zone is led by a zone owner, who also has line responsibility for his core function. The zone owner is typically supported by seven to nine safety ambassadors. A typical safety ambassador is a direct supervisor of a group of workmen. Around 250 identified zone owners and around 1,600 safety ambassadors were trained on technical and behavioural aspects. These trained employees became the change agents to improve the OH&S culture and to implement the programme by directly connecting to our workforce of approximately 15,000 people. This was done through four to six hours of sensitisation and idea generation workshops. A dedicated OH&S Performance Excellence Officer and the PMO team at each plant, region, and office helped the on-ground implementation of the ‘We Care’ agenda. All this helped in getting the line team to take ownership of OH&S performance. We introduced a company-wide reward and recognition programme to encourage safe behaviour and exceptional contribution to safety. The impact and result of the programme was evident, with significant improvement in OH&S performance. No on-site fatality was reported for 10 consecutive months. A visible change was observed in the safety behaviour of our people at all levels. The participation of workmen has significantly increased. They feel proud to be a part of the OH&S transformation journey.