TRANSFORMING TRANSFORMING TRANSFORMING SUSTAINABILITY REPORT FY 2023 COMMUNITIES THE PLANET THE WORKPLACE Using immersive and intuitive technologies to create a safer workplace Safety Patrollers Project The Safety Patrollers project is another innovative initiative aimed at enhancing safety at the workplace. Safety Patrollers work as safety officers, and help to identify unsafe acts or conditions on a regular basis. They also conduct safety interactions, Transforming the Workplace is an • Provides a safe environment to the help of virtualized technologies. In this and assess other safety-related critical tasks. essential pillar of our ‘Transforming practice before putting workers in the way we are also giving shape to Vedanta’s How the project works Together’ vision, and this involves actual physical environment vision of being a digital-first organization. creating zero-harm work environments • Avoid incidents that may result from This project involves more than 5000 operation and for our workforce through the use of learners’ unsafe behaviour or maintenance (O&M) employees who take on the role innovative technologies. Reducing learning mistakes, thus enabling of Safety Patrollers. The rotation of duties works workplace risk for those in high-risk roles employees to learn from their according to a roster that is drawn up on a monthly has been a priority area for us and mistakes basis, with selective O&M employees being BALCO has launched a project which identified at respective BU levels and then addresses this comprehensively. The project has proved to be highly designated as safety patrollers with the approval of BALCO’s XR Experience Zone uses successful both in terms of reducing BU Heads. Safety patroller schedules are Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and workplace incidents and through periodically uploaded onto a web portal for easy Mixed Reality technologies to train improved financial returns. The initial access and reference. Each day, auto generated employees by creating a realistic, project setup, which included the emails are sent to the safety patrollers, providing simulated experience of high-risk installation of virtual reality equipment them with the necessary information and reminders. activities within a controlled environment. at two units, involved a total spend of Every day, nearly 40 to 50 Safety Patrollers actively The simulated exercises and situations Rs 700,000. The return on investment fulfil their duties. In their role as the safety officer, that are provided as part of this training has been manifold, with savings worth they spend their time focusing on safety exercise are deeply immersive, and help Rs 1,868,00,000 generated. These interactions, observations, verification of critical employees develop the skills and reflexes savings have originated as a cumulative controls, permits to work (PTW), toolbox talks (TBT), intuitively, better preparing them for work result of the implementation of BALCO's XR Experience Zone is the and injury corrective and preventive action (CAPA) in high-risk, high-hazard jobs like working heightened safety measures and the first programme of its kind within verification. They report their observations and at heights, without facing any physical virtualized, real life-approximated the Vedanta Group and fills the interactions through the web portal. Compliance risk. The simulated conditions under training, which has reduced the number monitoring of the safety patrollers is conducted on which employees can train and hone their of accidents, lost mandays and much-needed gap of virtual a monthly basis to ensure adherence to safety skills have a number of benefits, like: compensation payouts, and reality-based training for protocols and responsibilities assigned. significantly minimized equipment employees in high-risk activities. • Engaging mode of training with damage. By training employees in simulated Overall, the Safety Patrollers initiative has helped in hands-on experience For the implementation of this initiative, risk-prone conditions it not only two ways: In the establishment of a positive safety • Builds muscle memory in ways that are BALCO won the Platinum Award at sharpens their skills and reflexes culture and the development of safety not possible via passive classroom CII-IQ National Safety Competition within safe and controlled settings, competencies among employees. These outcomes trainings 2022, in the category of safety it has also generated substantial contribute to our long-term vision of a zero-harm • Provides ability to analyse user digitalization. The stupendous success cost savings to the tune of Rs workplace and is a wonderful example of how our behaviour via performance and of this project has strengthened our collaborative efforts can sustainably drive safety analytics through competency intent of scaling up such safety training 186.8 millions. awareness and practice across the organization. assessment exercises across the organization with 91