Infiniti Retail improves its safety culture with learnings from Tata Consumer Products

Published on July 20, 2021

Infiniti Retail was interested in best practices related to felt leadership and safety and wanted to know how other Tata companies were communicating its safety messages across the board. Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) facilitated a best practice sharing session with Tata Consumer Products (TCPL) in November 2019. John Burdett, Global Operations Director, TCPL, had shared his company’s best practices in felt leadership pertaining to safety.

In the months after this session, Infiniti Retail worked on an internal plan on key areas in which the senior leadership team could drive safety messaging in the company. The company has implemented the following learnings:

1. The leadership team has incorporated safety talks during their interactions with employees. It started with the address by the CEO, Head of Operations & CHRO on Retail Employees Day, wherein the importance of safety was communicated.
2. During the lockdown, when store employees were at home, a video by each CXO was broadcast through the e-learning app. One consistent key message from all CXOs was highlighting the importance of safety of self and dear ones. The leadership team also decided to shut down all stores before the government announced the lockdown.
3. The company already has a practice of initiating any external meeting with a safety briefing, which includes emergency response protocols. Further, all visitors to office are given safety briefings soon as they reach the office reception.
4. The Safety Committee reviews safety standards and practices across all delivery centres, stores and offices. All safety-related violations are reviewed including high potential incidents, near misses and unsafe conditions.
5. At the company’s board meeting, an update on safety is reviewed by the board on a quarterly basis.
6. The leadership team highlights the importance of safety during their visits to locations.
7. The last quarterly eNPS survey showed positive outcomes on safety culture and overall safety of stores and delivery centres. The staff displayed a positive response to all safety initiatives.

Following these improvements, the number of safety observations at Infiniti Retail in Q3’21 reported a 52% decline in comparison to the same period in the previous year. This significant improvement is mainly due to the periodic interventions through audits, training and awareness programmes. Safety training participation is now also tracked and monitored every month. In June 2020, Infiniti Retail covered approximately 80% of its employees for COVID-19 protocol and resumption of business training. In September 2020, 35% employees were covered for the road safety programme and in Q3’FY21 more than 48% of employees were trained on basics of first aid (theory). Following these training interventions, Infiniti Retail has also observed a significant jump in reporting unsafe incidents.

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