Frank Voss on the work that led to him being named CEO of the year at Canada's Safest Employers Awards
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) has been on a ten-year safety journey that recently culminated in the company being recognized at Canada’s Safest Employers Awards, winning the WSIB Award for Canada's Best Health & Safety Culture and the company's president, Frank Voss, being named Canada's Safest CEO of the Year.
According to Voss, the company embarked on a mission of transformation that began by identifying significant gaps between management and employee perceptions of safety at the facility.
Discovering the gap
TMMC employs over 8,600 workers at its facility in Cambridge, Ontario. Approximately a decade ago, the company commissioned a third party to conduct an employee survey on safety culture. The results revealed a disconnect between how management assessed safety conditions and how team members viewed the workplace.
"We thought we were doing great and had lots of good things in place, but some team members said, 'you might think you're doing really good things, but this is what we see and what we think and there's a gap,'" Voss said in a recent interview.
Following the survey, Toyota's leadership visited sister companies in Japan to study their approach to safety culture. This visit informed the development of a strategy focused on employee engagement.
Learning from Japan and building "felt leadership"
"The big thing that we learned from them was you need to take the time to go and listen to your team members. Have the supervisor do the work. Have the supervisor go and try and live in the team member's shoes to be able to understand the pain, the frustration, the struggles, the individual team members having," Voss explained.
The company subsequently developed what it calls "felt leadership," a concept emphasizing direct supervisor engagement with employees regarding safety concerns and workplace conditions.
In support of this approach, Toyota implemented the "Take Action" system, which allows employees to submit safety concerns and suggestions. The company recorded over 30,000 Take Action submissions in the past year.
"When a team member puts in a Take Action then you know management's responsibility is to go and understand what the issue is and then work with the team member to come up with a successful resolution," Voss said.
TMMC developed a five-year safety strategy following the initial findings from the survey. The company is currently in the second cycle of this strategy. The plan incorporates both cultural initiatives and systematic changes to how work is designed.
It has introduced practices aimed at helping supervisors understand the demands team members face in their roles. More recently, TMMC implemented the "Any Member, Any Process" initiative, which focuses on designing work to accommodate workers with varying physical characteristics and abilities.
Voss noted that safety design considerations extend to new facility development. "When I'm building this process, what standards am I using to make sure I'm making the work is most suitable for most people, right? Because you know, you want to make sure that women and men have the same opportunity to work," he said.
Implementation through systems and technology
TMMC has incorporated digital tools into its safety approach, including Digital Twin technology for process modeling. These tools allow the facility to identify potential ergonomic challenges before processes are implemented.
"Digital for us is very important. We're also using these tools to help us do ergonomic assessment. Because they're allowing us to measure posture in real time. So, we videotape the processes and then we take those videos and analyze them, and we get a quantitative analysis of the work," Voss explained.
Voss is currently implementing these practices at a new Toyota facility in Texas. The facility will produce vehicle chassis and will serve as an application of the safety approaches developed at the Canadian location.
When asked about guidance for other leaders, Voss says: "Don't be afraid to go to the process. Don't be afraid to go and see what the team member sees every day and listen to what they want because people want to do the right thing. And if you are listening to what they're saying, try to help them, they will advance everything in your business."
He added: "Go down to the floor and spend time with people who are making things happen and try to do the best to make their daily lives better. Remember happiness is a big part of our success."
