Cemex’s new safety campaign

Working constantly working to achieve greater active engagement in occupational risk prevention from all of its workers, Cemex has introduced the ‘Avisame!’ campaign in Spain as a further step in this direction. The campaign, which translates to ‘Warn me!’ of ‘Let me know!’, seeks collaboration and open dialogue with employees on security issues.

This safety campaign goes beyond the typical security concept that promotes risk prevention on an individual level by encouraging employees to take the initiative to warn their colleagues of any potential they might be taking and encourage them to speak up voluntarily.

"At CEMEX we want a culture where everybody feels personally obligated, not one where security is based on a culture of fear of the consequences or punishment. That´s the only way to achieve safe and sustainable behaviour over time," says Javier Mota, CEMEX Health & Safety Director in Spain. It is common to seek to achieve a safety culture where safe habits and behaviorus are internalised as personal values, and thus readily observed in employees. However, this only involves an individual commitment: people take care of themselves. According to Mota, at CEMEX we were looking to go even further. The idea is that all employees, in addition to worrying about their own safety, are also concerned for the safety of others.

It was this idea that led to the “Warn me!” campaign in Spain. This concise message was printed on stickers that workers could add to their helmets, so that their coworkers could see the appeal and act accordingly. "So others’ behaviours are corrected in a natural way, because it is the same colleague who requests it," says Mota, "and no one is offended: it’s understood to be for your health.”

As a company we always seek to scale our best practices globally, and the campaign was so successful that it was also implemented at our operations in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It owes much of its success to its voluntary nature. "That’s very important," says Mota. "We want to cross that barrier where we think that 'it will bother him if I say something.' On the contrary, I’m doing him and his family a favour, and that’s why he’s asking me to do it by applying the sticker."

The use of this sticker has never been mandatory, but still the majority of workers in Spain have decided to participate, requiring several new orders from the printers. Even contractors, non-CEMEX workers who provide services in CEMEX’s Spanish facilities, have requested the sticker, requiring an extension of the campaign’s scope. Now that the initial campaign has concluded, some Spain operations automatically provide workers with a sticker along with any new helmets, but in the voluntary spirit of the campaign it is up to the employee to apply it.

Adapted from press release by Rebecca Bowden

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/europe-cis/21092016/cemexs-new-safety-campaign-301/