Safety performance
We are making good progress towards our ultimate goal of zero accidents and work-related ill health. Across our global organisation, lost time accidents decreased by 8.5% in 2019. And in our manufacturing sites, lost time accidents decreased by 33%. There was also significant improvement in how we manage our contractors' health and safety, with a 44% reduction in lost time accidents involving contractors.
However, the story for Tetra Pak employees working at customers sites was not so positive, with a considerable increase in lost time accidents compared with 2018, particularly in Services.
A number of initiatives are already under way aimed at ensuring that the number of accidents is lower in 2020. These include continued rollout of our Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Culture Change Programme; a new project focused on chemical safety; and improved training and awareness. In 2019, 1300 employees took the "field force basic OHS training". In 2020, our remaining 3000 employees working at customer sites will also complete the course. In addition, more than 800 project and site managers will attend the Project Managers course which will help them to understand how to deliver a project that is Safe & Healthy.
Driving culture change
To help us achieve our goal of zero accidents and work-related ill health, in 2019 we launched our company-wide Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Culture Change Programme. This is built around the following three elements:
- A Fair & Just (F&J) culture
This aims to build an environment of trust and fairness where it is safe to report and learn from mistakes, errors and system flaws, but where violations of safety rules are not tolerated. F&J places more responsibility on all employees, from workshop operators to managers. - Life-Saving Rules (LSR)
These nine rules have been developed from the major hazards that our employees in our manufacturing, services and project organisations are likely to be exposed to. - "STOP! Are you in the danger zone?"
Because we cannot cover everything in nine rules, the F&J and LSR are accompanied by a supporting campaign to raise awareness of any and all potential risks.
Tracking our impact
We continue to monitor how we manage OHS through an annual self-assessment review led by our corporate governance function. Our manufacturing sites are audited to OHSAS 18001 and a formal programme of assessment visits is under way.
To make sure our OHS teams can fully support our businesses, we have further enhanced our OHS team for our market companies by recruiting Services and Processing OHS managers for each of our clusters. Every factory now has a three-year OHS plan.
One message; multiple channels
Our manual on OHS at customer sites provides a set of mandatory procedures applicable to all Tetra Pak employees working at customer premises. The manual helps teams report against 19 standards and design action plans. We monitor performance using a maturity matrix based on five levels of compliance. Deviations against the required standards result in clear action plans to drive improvement. The manual is supported by a shorter handbook for all employees that provides simple health and safety guidance. The handbook is also available as an app.