New Denmark longwall, located north of Johannesburg and owned by coal giant Anglo Coal, has experienced a past marred by a less than average safety record, retrenchments and low mine morale. Faced with this history, management had to think outside the square to turn the situation around and motivate the 660 workers.

Early initiatives introduced focused on reducing lost time injuries. The first program, “Our leader in the workplace”, established in 1999 reduced lost time injuries from 47 in 1999 to 33 in 2000.

The next initiative in 2001 focused on employee accountability. With the help of the slogan - “It’s my responsibility” - lost time injuries reduced further to 27 in 2001.

Whilst these programs had been successful, management felt more was needed to see the sort of safety figures they were chasing. Initiative three proved to be the clincher. SMARTY (Safety Must Always Relate To Yourself) came in the form of a cartoon crocodile, launched on December 20, 2001. The result was a total of six lost time injuries for 2002, a massive 78% decrease.

According to New Denmark general manager Ben Magara the program was based on the concept “people are most engaged when they are playing”. Building on this, action plans were centred on having fun, where barriers between management and workers could be broken down to fuel better communication. The conductor for better communication proved to be SMARTY, which evolved from a cartoon to a life-size mascot.

When mascot character first appeared at the mine (a worker donned the specially developed crocodile outfit), one miner ran away in fear but later approached and touched the rubber teeth.

SMARTY was followed by the development of a second figure, called Tsoseltso. Interactions between the two crocodile figures were given life in a specially designed cartoon strip which carries a range of safety and production messages.

The result of the three step initiative was considerable. Armoured Face Conveyor reliability rose almost 300% in a year, the longwall monthly average rose from 170,000t to 356,000t and year on year improvement of longwall annual sales was more than 70%.

The mine’s longwall system comprises 135 Joy 2-leg, 885t supports, two Joy 4LS shearers with RS20 control systems; and two 34mm twin chain AFCs powered by two 450kW motors.

Over the last four years production performance has improved by 83%, from an output of 2.8Mt in 2001 to 4.3Mt in 2003. The mine’s best month was in September 2003 when it set a new monthly record of 412,599 clean tons of coal. Forecast output for 2004 is 5.1Mt. Average monthly output has also steadily increase and year to date is 356,000t, a 9% improvement on 2003.

New Denmark Colliery also measured attitude and morale changes through a culture survey in February 2003. In the survey 87% of respondents agreed managers listened to them, 80% believed they had enough fun at work, and 96% were positive about the future of the colliery.

“Recently there’s been a total change in the climate,” remarked a New Denmark employee. “The mine manager made a big difference. The guys from the old school you had to address as Mister, and they wouldn’t communicate with ordinary employees. Now people are recognized as people, there’s empowerment.”

Another employee remarked, “In the old days when you came to New Denmark you thought Siberia – now people want to come here”

This is not to say New Denmark has no more work to do, gains are fragile. “There are clouds on the horizon. I’m concerned that to maintain energy levels is going to be very hard – it’s draining for the people in the management office. We keep preaching to the guys two levels down, but we’re not doing it right – we’re not empowering them. As we perceive it, if we don’t keep pushing, they don’t do it,” said mine management.

New Denmark is now looking to the future, a better future with a sustained focus on safety and the introduction of environmental awareness through a new crocodile figure called SOEFY (Save Our Environment For Yourself), the ‘child’ of SMARTY and Tsoseltso.

A recent innovation has been the launch of a weekly bingo game. At the start of each shift mine workers are given a sheet of paper summarising relevant information about the operation that includes the performance of each shift, safety performance, Anglo’s share price, messages from management, as well as a series of ‘bingo’ numbers. Participating workers then ‘play’ and at the end of the week the winner gets a small prize such as a cap.

According to Magara this is one of the best management tools the mine has adopted.