SPOKEN – Episode 3

In the third edition of Spoken, Sanjeev talks more about the ongoing COVID-19 situation, and a new global Health and Safety strategy ‘Be GFG Safe’. We learn more about the Be GFG Safe strategy from GFG’s Global Head of Health and Safety Fran Nores and hear from Grant Schmidt, Global Head of Culture and Performance about an important mental health and wellbeing initiative.

TRANSCRIPT

JUSTINE GREENE: Hello and welcome to ‘Spoken’ – the podcast for GFG Alliance colleagues across the world. I’m Justine Greene and this time we’ll talk more about the coronavirus situation and focus on a new Health and Safety strategy called ‘Be GFG Safe’. As always, myself and all our guests are joining the conversation remotely. First on the line is Sanjeev Gupta, Executive Chairman of the GFG Alliance, hello and welcome again Sanjeev…

SANJEEV: Hello again, Justine.

JUSTINE: Now, Sanjeev, as we start on the road towards some sort of new norm, I understand you’ve been able to release yourself from lockdown a little, how are you keeping yourself safe?

SANJEEV: It’s been a– If I’m honest, a great relief after about two months of being at home and working in isolation. I was fortunate enough to get out to some of our plants. Obviously, you can imagine there was a lot of protocol and everybody was very, very particular to make sure that I was safe. And of course, you know, I kept everybody safe. So we did everything you can think of, and probably ten times that in terms of all our distancing measures. And it’s has been a very fulfilling experience. I got out to a couple of our UK plants. I also got out to our plants in Romania and Czech, I met with the Romanian PM, that was all interesting, talking through masks and so on. And also I met with the deputy PM in Czech. So, it was very important that I was able to touch base with our people and these leaders. But now, back again. Back in home, back in the world, so I’m working from here.

JUSTINE: And what have you been hearing from colleagues about how the business has been continuing to respond to the COVID-19 crisis?

SANJEEV: Yeah, it’s incredible how adversity brings out the best in people. I’m always amazed in times like this how brilliant people can be and we’ve seen some great stuff. I mean, plants have coped really well. In every respect, in terms of if you look at the record, we have a number of cases, that’s incredible. We have only thirty-eight suspected cases out of a total global population of over thirty-five thousand, that’s testimony to the fact that – I believe – we’ve worked very hard. And both our leadership and our people have worked very hard to keep everybody safe and continue operations, continue to serve our customers, but do so in a safe way. So that’s been good. And also, in terms of the market forces, many of our markets, ever since we’ve been combining shifts, you know, auto, for example, has taken a nose-dive. In certain other sectors, there have been disruptions. Actually our results, even now, surprisingly are much better than we expected despite the downturn. So it’s been quite revealing and we’re happy with our performance so far.

JUSTINE: So, Sanjeev, looking more broadly and looking ahead, certainly difficult times ahead, how do you see the organisation changing and adapting to the new market conditions?

SANJEEV: We know, it goes without saying that we have seen unprecedented change in our business, in terms of the market place. And the impact of that has yet fully to roll out over the next months and possibly years. So we have to adjust to this new norm, you know not just in terms of demand but also in terms of how people work and whether that will change. You know, whether it has lasting change in terms of patterns going forward. So something which we are assessing very carefully. We will– You know, we’re already adapting to each of our markets and each of our conditions, making sure we adapt production, we adapt our organisation. And this is something which is obviously clearly on top of the list, in terms of how we start planning for the future. And we will, you know, the important thing is that the business is capable, is needed, and it will adapt to these changes and it will be fit and it will be in a position to continue from strength to strength.

JUSTINE: Well, let’s head out on site now, to Italy, Giovanni Carpino, MD of Liberty Magona in Piombino, has a guided tour for us of the latest safety measures there…

GIOVANNI: Hello everybody, my name is Giovanni Carpino, I am the managing director of LIBERTY Magona. Let’s go together to see what are the most important measure that we put in place here in Piombino. We have put some thermo-scanners at the entry of the building. In this point, everybody has to measure their temperature. The most important place to take care about is the workplace. In that case, people, of course, have to be careful about their social distancing. They have a mask, they have gloves, and in most part of the cubicle they put some plexiglass panels to avoid the direct contact between the two guys that are in the same cubicle. Very important is also the managing of the canteen, the company canteen. People are obliged to put gloves and the mask before entry, and also the tables are used in a different way in respect to before. Because for each table we have only one guy. One person, not as in the past four persons. These are our main points, and everybody is safe and everybody want that, as soon as possible, this problem finished and everybody can get to their normal life as soon as possible. So this is a wish for everybody, thank you very much for listening.

JUSTINE: And thank you to Giovanni and the LIBERTY Magona team. Sanjeev, some good safety measures in place in Piombino – how do they compare with other GFG facilities?

SANJEEV: Actually, it’s a very good example of the sort of things in plants, and it’s probably more or less a common theme across all the plants. Apart from distancing and cleansing, the other main issues always to focus on is areas like the canteens. Areas where there is going to be, you know, where people normally congregate. That’s the focus area, and the people leaving and coming is another focus area. So, you know, in production sites across the world I think some of these measures are obvious. But there is a lot of collective learning, so each plant communicates regularly all the issues they’ve had, all the measures they’ve taken, and the new ideas they’ve come up with. And you know, obviously, we adopt the best we can think across all our plants.

JUSTINE: OK, coming next, we’ll look at the new GFG Health and Safety strategy. Well, Sanjeev, with or without Covid-19, what’s your personal view about the importance of health and safety?

SANJEEV: Yes, it’s a very personal and important question for me. As you know, first of all, families are one of our core values, out of our three values of change, family and sustainability. So it’s something, which is very dear to me, the wellbeing of my family or my people. It’s something which is very, very important. We all want to see all our colleagues safe, we don’t want– You know, for our sake, for our families sake, that’s certainly probably the most important thing which will come to my mind, if you ever talk about the important things to me and my life, and what is important in business. So while that is critical and all mechanisms, methodologies, systems, we can adopt to improve in that regard are always a top priority. But actually, I also think it’s a good barometer to the performance of a business. If you look at how businesses adapt and perform, and how people– What the culture is in terms of health and safety, it’s very important. It reflects on how the business itself operates. So for me, many other things which we’re now implementing in our new system, including certainly the most important bit for me being the concept of every individual owning the safety as their own initiative, rather than a corporate initiative. Things like that which A), I think, improve performance for health and safety, but also will then bring results for the organisation in terms of it’s commercial performance as well.

JUSTINE: And with different businesses in the GFG Alliance, how important is it to have a consistent framework and approach to safety?

SANJEEV: Again, culture is, you know the beating heart of any organisation. And families are a core value within that, health and safety is a core value. Having a consistent understanding of what that means, for all of us, it’s the one thing, which brings everybody together. Whenever we have any, you know, health and safety awards, any functions and so on, it’s incredible how everybody comes together and finds that commonality because that’s a common language we all speak to each other. Where we’re all trying to look after each other, so I think it’s pretty cool.

JUSTINE: OK, so let’s look at what the new Health and Safety strategy ‘Be GFG Safe’ is all about. To explain is Fran Nores, Global Head of Health and Safety, joining us from Melbourne, Australia. Welcome, Fran, take us through please the headlines of these new safety guidelines for the GFG business, what are they?

FRAN: Thank you, Justine. ‘Be GFG Safe’, we focus on four strategic pillars, which are all integrated. And these pillars have been developing with all the safety network of GFG, and we are using previous experience. and introducing best practices. The pillars, basically, are enabling performance, with this pillar we try to leverage our existing system processes, tools, practice, and we try to copy the best practices but also to eliminate the waste. The second pillar is about the critical incident prevention, we want to manage here a low likelihood by high consequence events. The third pillar is about people, and here what we want to achieve is we want to develop an interdependent safety culture where everybody takes responsibility for looking after themselves, but also for looking after each other. And the final pillar is about occupational health, and this is what we call internally as ‘fitness for work and fitness for life’.

JUSTINE: And in terms of timing, explain your thinking as to why you’re introducing the new strategy for safety now?

FRAN: OK, I mean, with the global growth of GFG and the fact that now we have said our industrial pillars as LIBERTY Steel, ALVANCE Aluminium and SIMEC energy, I think now we have the rightest structure to drive a united safety approach across GFG. I mean, the safety vision and the mission that we are launching is very aligned with our company values of family, change and sustainability.

JUSTINE: Clearly though, one size can’t fit all, so how can this strategy flex at different sites across the business?

FRAN: This is a very good question. The complexity of this journey is that not everybody starts at the same time. Not everybody starts from the same place. And not only that, the other complexity is that not everybody moves at the same pace. The safety journey that we have designed is a five tier journey, with five different levels of maturity. What we want is, we want to achieve in five years time, we want to achieve the resilient phase of maturity. But we know, at the same time, that some of the sites, some of the businesses, we’ll not reach that level in five years and other businesses will reach before five years. And that’s something that we have to consider when we are planning the initiatives and the plans for the year. The level we want to achieve we call ‘resilient’, and basically it means that we achieve a consistent safety performance. That means that we are able to consistently not have critical incidents, and we are able to develop our workforce where safety’s not a priority, safety’s integrated in everything we do.

JUSTINE: Thank you Fran. Sanjeev, I imagine when you introduce new guidelines, you need the full involvement of everyone in the business for them to be effective…

SANJEEV: Absolutely, this has been, you know an initiative which has been discussed a lot in the senior leadership team across the group and it was launched with everybody’s involvement, and sure it will get rolled out and will be a topic of discussion which I will be having, the senior leaders will be having constantly.

JUSTINE: Alright, thanks Sanjeev. Still to come, your questions for Sanjeev, and next your feedback on mental health and wellbeing.

On our last podcast Denise Timns, Global Head of Human Resources was talking about how the Culture and Performance team were repurposed to focus on supporting colleague’s mental health and wellbeing. Joining us now from Sydney, Australia is Grant Schmidt, Global Head of Culture and Performance. Grant, what have colleagues been telling you about this important topic?

GRANT: So we have a global employee engagement programme, which we call ‘Your Voice’, that we’re gradually rolling out to all of our sites. Plus we recently did what we called a global Covid-19 people check-in which, which was again a survey type tool. In both those platforms, we got the voice of our employees. And those employees, one of the key messages that come out of it was their interest and desire for support, resources, and really focus on this topic of mental health and wellbeing.

JUSTINE: You mention the desire for support resources, so how will you act on this feedback you’ve received?

GRANT: For my teams’ effort, we’re in the midst of pulling together a global strategy with the assistance of what we call a global virtual mental health and well-being team. That team is made up of people from different functions and operations across all of our countries and our major operations. And we’re going to use that team to provide input and representation from their particular local context on this project. In particular, the teams going to be looking at the data and the information that we got from the two surveys, as well as investigating what mental health and well-being means for their local context. And there’ll be a key conduit for introducing various mental health and well-being initiatives that come out of this initiative, but will be locally relevant to country and to operations.

JUSTINE: So, Grant, how do colleagues listening now get involved with these initiatives?

GRANT: So look, excitingly, we’re about to launch a trial, globally scaled mental health and well-being initiative called ‘I am Here’. And that’s going to be in partnership with its Irish based programme founders. It’s a world-class evidence-based programme, that seeks to really build a culture of awareness and community around mental health and wellbeing. As that programme is launched, there’ll be a lot of information, and promotion of it so everyone can really participate in it. I think it’s important to note though, that we’re just at the beginning of this mental health and well-being initiative, but people are really committed to this venture, and in particular, Sanjeev is personally, you know, sponsoring and supporting it. I know it’s an important topic for him and the entire senior leadership team.

JUSTINE: Grant thanks very much for joining us. Sanjeev, as Grant says, early days but ‘I am Here’ sounds very meaningful to you ….

SANJEEV: It is, definitely. And especially in this current environment. I believe that two of the highest contributors to a deterioration in mental health is stress and isolation. And unfortunately, both of these aspects are more and more prevalent right now, during this COVID crisis. There was a strong calling on many of us to rise above what we normally do, work longer hours, put in more and sort of react to an ever-changing situation. So stress levels can be very high. And on top of that, we’re all having to largely work from relatively isolated environments, especially people who are working from home. So that’s where that isolation, while it has an upside in terms of time with family, but from a workplace point of view we are working now with less interaction, and I for one for sure miss my interaction with all my colleagues. So launching this at this time is every more important.

JUSTINE: OK, now, rounding off this episode, it’s your opportunity to get your questions direct to Sanjeev. We’ll tell you how to get in touch in a moment. But first, let’s get a question for Sanjeev to answer now.

RICHARD BOTTING: This is Richard Botting, CEO of LIBERTY Building Solutions here in Dubai, supplying building materials into the construction sector in the Middle East. Hi Sanjeev, do you, like me, believe the current levels of low activity in the local construction sector will pick up in the next few months?

SANJEEV: Yes, Richard. Actually, I do agree with you. Firstly, construction activity is project-based, so all projects which have been paused, whether it’s residential or commercial, or infrastructure, they will resume. And we’re seeing that happening already in many of the regions of the world. And that means construction activity will rise. The second point is, I think every government is going to try to deploy whatever stimulus is in their power, in terms of getting the economy up and running again. And one of the key things which is under their control is infrastructure. So the infrastructure will be a key area of growth and in all markets, we’re seeing a great pipeline of infrastructure coming, which obviously is construction. And for us, that’s good news because our steel business is very heavily exposed to construction. So at least in construction, we expect things to be better than in some of the other sectors.

JUSTINE: OK, thanks for that, now, here’s our next question…

DUGGIE LIVINGSTONE: Hi Sanjeev, it’s Duggie Livingstone. I’m the engineering and maintenance manager at Lochaber Smelter in Fort William. My question is, you have set very challenging targets for CN30, do you plan to offset emissions or will there be a focus on eliminating carbon at source through technology advancements?

SANJEEV: Good question Duggie. Very clearly, our main objective, by far is not offset but a reduction in emissions. In many cases, we will achieve that to a very, very high degree. Certainly, in terms of recycling and using renewable energy for recycling, that almost eliminates emissions to a large degree. In some places, where there isn’t enough availability of scrap, for example, and we have to rely on virgin materials, there we will look to use new technologies such as hydrogen, conversion or reduction of iron ore. But yet, with all these different initiatives and objectives there will still remain a carbon footprint. And that’s where offset is important as well, and offset is not something which is less important, let’s say. It’s equally important, you know, plantation of trees, peat restoration, many such initiatives which the group is focusing on are also– They have any other derivative advantages apart from just the emissions offset. So we will do both. But our primary focus will be on reduction, not offset.

JUSTINE: Well, thanks for those questions. And if you’d like to ask Sanjeev a question, do get in touch, just send us an email to spoken@gfgalliance.com, that’s spoken@gfgalliance.com. Also, you can send us your comments or any ideas you might have for the podcast. So do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you. Sanjeev before we go, just give us an idea of how your diary is shaping up over the next few weeks, now that some of the travel restrictions are easing and you’re able to resume visits around the group?

SANJEEV: Indeed, I mean, I’m going on Friday back to Rotherham, which I’m looking forward to. There’s been… My last visit actually brought about a lot of interesting ideas and developments so I want to go back again to make sure we get momentum behind them in terms of taking us forward. Next week I’ll go to Galati host, the Prime Minister will be signing an exciting agreement, which more will be revealed next week. So yes, I’m taking all the precautions necessary but I am definitely doing my best to get out there and be amongst the businesses.

JUSTINE: Sanjeev, great talking with you again, look forward to next time, thanks for joining us.

SANJEEV: Thank you, Justine, great as always. I look forward to the next one. Great, thanks.

JUSTINE: We’ll be back soon with more of the latest news and views from across the business. In the meantime, from me Justine Greene, Sanjeev Gupta and all our guests, thanks for listening.