Malcolm’s mission to make L'Oréal best in class

Last month, our very own Laura Aucott and Aisling Reid travelled to Paris to meet with Malcolm Staves, Corporate Health and Safety Director for L'Oréal. Malcolm is an impressive Health and Safety professional, with nearly 30 years in the business, who went from a Chemical Engineer, graduating from Loughborough University, to a well-respected and leading health & safety leader for one of the world’s most respected companies – and we wanted to know more.

L'Oréal has approximately 90,000 employees across the world, and around 130 lost time accidents per year – an impressive statistic by anyone’s standards. But as Malcolm says “one accident is one too many, as behind every accident there are families and loved ones that are impacted”. How does Malcolm do it?

“We want other companies to relate to us, and we want to be the best that we can be – and that means focusing on continuous improvement and adapting. L'Oréal now have reached a stage where they are doing things well, and can export this culture, but it is important not to be complacent as safety is never done” – says Malcolm. “It is imperative that we are always looking for what we may have missed. When you don’t look at your incidents, and take them personally, nor review the effectiveness of your process and tools – that’s when you should move on. With Safety the mission is personal“

L'Oréal has an extremely centralised Safety culture – almost everything is driven from the Corporate team in collaboration, with the EHS Directors of their Zones. 

“The advantage of this” explains Malcolm “is that when there is a problem with something and we find a fix, we can implement a worldwide measure to fix it everywhere. All sites have the same programs and tools – of course there are cultural differences, and our safety programme can be adapted to take into consideration local culture – but the skeleton always remains the same. Don’t get me wrong, we get this can sometimes be frustrating, especially for new EHS hires – as they need to conform to the L'Oréal system. However the system works!”

So far, so good – but how did Malcolm even get to this point in the first place?

“I started out as a Chemical Engineer – originally I was in construction but then I was poached by a chemical company to work for them and became a plant manager. As part of an acquisition by the company, we had to have people on site for an environmental audit and I wouldn’t let one of them on as he had a beard that wouldn’t work with our RPE. A few months later that same person contacted me and offered me a job in consultancy!”

Malcolm moved from this consultancy through a number of different roles, looking after environmental concerns across Europe and Asia for American National Can (part of Pechiney Group), and was eventually asked to also look after Corporate Environment, Health and Safety in Paris. A move from there to Alcan Packing (via acquisition), then Bureau Veritas occurred, before Malcolm settled into his current role at L'Oréal. We were intrigued to find out more about his qualifications – did he take a fairly traditional route with these?

“I actually went through the route of British Safety Council – as it was a qualification that made sense for me personally,” Malcolm explains. “British Safety Council works very well with the international aspect of my role – originally I asked for my team at L'Oréal to all be NEBOSH trained but now we allow them to pick the qualification route that works for them, the same as I did”.

So what makes L'Oréal different? And what can other companies, who potentially don’t have the same resources as L'Oréal do to improve?

Malcolm says “Poor safety is usually leadership related. We really push leadership to spend time on the floor, making genuine connections with people and asking them how they feel about various things. It is important that we try and change the shop floor mindset from ‘we are here to produce’ but to truly understanding that their bosses do want them to be safe.

We have an EHS steering committee for senior management in each site who look at their site strategies, leadership techniques and effectiveness of programs, and this is completely separate to our safety reps and committees. We also make sure that employees do risk assessments with their

managers and not the EHS team, as having them done by EHS misses an opportunity to change mindset and the way people see risk. At the end of the day, it is the operators who know their machines etc and what could conceivably go wrong and result in a serious accident or worse – so it is important to utilise all of their knowledge. Our main safety mindset is that we don’t want you to work safely only for L'Oréal, we want you to work safely for you – to spend time with your family, play football, hug your grandkids – that is what is important to us.”

Is that tied into the thinking behind your Safe@Work- Safe@Home program?

“Absolutely – we want to get people thinking of how they think about things at work, and taking those lessons home with them. We also try and give them hands-on help and support for their home lives – so for example we gave everyone in our department a fire extinguisher. We have had someone who had an apartment fire and had to use it – we will never know how bad that could have been! Things like bringing home a fire extinguisher also helps create a safety dialogue with your family as well – it raises awareness and sparks conversations.”

So what does Malcolm think are the traits of a future leader?

“They need to know about everything” he explains with a smile “to run a successful team you need to know a little bit about everything, be a good generalist and that includes communications and coaching. You can have specialists working in your team and network, giving guidance on specific areas of expertise, but you need to know enough to understand what they are talking about! It’s also massively important that you are able to adapt your leadership style to the audience, speak their language, and thus adapt the message to them. That is what we do here at L'Oréal, the underlying message is the same but it can be delivered differently depending on what team or part of the world I am interacting with. I am also passionate about the hummingbird theory!”

Well obviously that is something we need to know more about! What is the Hummingbird theory?

“In short the hummingbird theory is the idea that every small action counts. If we can get every single one of our 90000 employees doing something, no matter how small for health & safety each day, that will result in one big change ”. It’s also about giving our best and influencing the behaviour of others”

Any other tips for future leaders?

“Yes, I think too often we as safety professionals get hung up on getting everything right and looking for technical solutions to problems. To be a future leader, you really need a clear vision of where you want to go and you need to be able to communicate that. You then need to develop the strategy and action plan to deliver this in collaboration with your network. I am a great believer that today's, as well as future, problems can be solved together but not alone. Health & Safety professionals often work in silos as experts, for me this is not the future of our profession; we need to network both inside and outside of our organisation and develop the “soft skills”.

If you can do all that with passion, you will get everyone on board.  It does not necessarily matter if it is the best vision or strategy in the world; but what matters is that you are constantly moving forward in collaboration with your network and management towards this vision.

Aisling wanted to know if there were any particular companies that L'Oréal look up to, as ‘best in class’?

“I wouldn’t say that there is anyone company that we strive to be (other than truly L'Oréal) however I do find nuggets of wisdom in many companies. For example; we are currently running a program called ‘LIFE’ which we ‘borrowed’ from Ruairi Connor at Rexham, now Ball Corporation, (Thanks Ruairi!). I like to surround myself with people that are considered leaders in their field, including competitors, as sharing best practices is how we all get better and how we develop the industry as a whole. Some great examples of companies I like to work closely with are Total, Nestlé, Unilever, P&G, ABF, GSK, Danone, Mars and Sanofi.” Malcolm is always conscious not to put himself and L’Oréal on a pedestal as everyone can always improve, and working alongside others can really help drive performance forward.

So what is next for L'Oréal, in 2020 and further into the future?

“Well currently around 60% of sites have warm up and stretching as part of our worldwide “Ergonomic Attitude” programme and we would like to expand on this practice. We also want to start being much tougher on fire risk management and prevention as well as our LIFE program. Although we currently have good standards, NFPA standard worldwide, we want to take this to the next level as well as our Well being initiatives. We will continue to focus on the way we are trying to spread our safety culture and make a difference to our work colleagues and their families outside of work. I am sure that the “keeping kids under 5 safe” campaign, in association with RoSPA, will continue to be an integral part of Safe@Work-Safe@Home for years to come.

I am also keen to continue upskilling my current EHS team and network, by looking at a skills gap to develop the “softer skills” like leadership, selling/marketing, communication and coaching/mentoring skills. We need to prepare for the future and it’s not staying just within our comfort area of health & safety expertise. We need to be able to adapt our messages and leadership styles to whoever is the audience whether it’s the CEO, front line supervisor, administrative assistant or line operator. We need EHS experts that are good leaders and can make a difference and influence at all levels.”

After this fantastic chat, we were lucky enough to be shown around the site and met a number of influential people within the team. The site in Paris is genuinely impressive, with huge R&D functions as well as an internal start-up “incubator/accelerator” to develop ideas from staff into real life items. When you think that this is just one of many sites that L'Oréal have throughout the globe, from Paris to Brazil, China to India, and it is clear that Malcolm must be doing something right to be keeping things running so smoothly. So did he have a final piece of inspiration for those who want to be able to do the same?

I believe that part of being successful is having an exceptional team that is passionate about health and safety, are experts in their domain but also have the soft skills to drive cultural change at all levels. This alone is not enough as it’s important that the line management believe and visibly demonstrates that safety is important to them. At L’Oreal we have this and this makes the difference. At the end of the day without all this I am sure our culture and performance would not be the same and you wouldn’t be interviewing me ( he says with a smile).

From an individual perspective I strongly believe that another part of being successful is based on proximity, talking to people and being visibly passionate for what you are doing. I am someone that still does audits, visit sites and talks to my “clients” and partners. I think many people lose that at senior management level and they get more and more tied to a desk. It is always important to stay connected and to use that connection to adapt to changes in the world so that we continue to protect our people and ensure that they go safely home to their families after work. I know it’s a cliché but having that always in mind, along with the Hummingbird, guides me in the way that I work

Thanks again Malcolm! 

You can read more about the Hummingbird Theory here -

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