Social Responsibility - Health & Safety
The health, safety and wellbeing of all employees, contractors, visitors, neighbours and customers remain at the forefront of all business activity. While all individuals have a responsibility for their own health and safety and that of their colleagues, ultimate responsibility for health, safety and the environment rests with the Group Chief Executive. Safety programmes continue to emphasise the importance of improving behaviour and of individuals taking personal responsibility. Changing the culture in this way builds on the safety management systems already in place, giving everyone a greater degree of safety, not just at work but also beyond. All injuries at work are regarded as unnecessary and avoidable. No matter how minor, each one must be reported and investigated. Only by investigating and learning from such incidents will the desired levels of safety performance be achieved.
Safety performance is now measured using two key performance indicators, the lost time injury rate (LTIR) and the significant injury rate (SIR).
Lost Time Injury Rate
A lost time injury is a work-related accident or illness of sufficient severity to prevent the individual involved being able to report for work on the following day or shift. The LTIR expresses these injuries as a rate per 200,000 hours which is approximately the time worked by 100 people in one year.
The LTIR for 2008 was 0.28, an improvement of 18 per cent over the previous year, building on the significant improvements achieved over the last nine years. The results for the company were however overshadowed by two major incidents; an employee was run over by a fork lift truck in the Rossford USA plant and a permanent contract driver was killed loading glass at the Kansai facility in Japan.
Significant Injury Rate
As the LTIR has improved, it has become less useful as an indicator of performance, especially at site level. Consequently, the significant injury rate (SIR) was introduced. This is defined as an injury sufficiently severe to require medical treatment or the reallocation of duties to allow an individual to continue working. The SIR was 1.25 in 2008, an improvement of roughly 20 per cent over the previous year.
There were 114 lost time injuries and 321 injuries classified as significant in the year, for the total 32,500 group employees.
A proactive safety evaluation system now renamed PRISM exists in all facilities, ensuring that all activities are subjected to risk assessment, with proper procedures in place to protect individuals. Sites have continued to make measurable improvements in their proactive safety performance. Behavioural safety programmes 2Bsafe@Pilkington have been promoted together with further development of ‘Key Safe Behaviours’ and the ‘Stop and Think’ safety guides. Close track is kept on the percentage of safe and unsafe behaviours measured by these programmes, which complement the ‘incident reporting’ already established.
Working with contractors on existing plants and new construction sites presents major safety challenges as evidenced by the tragic fatalities. Group Engineering and local experts, working closely with principal and sub-contractors, has actively driven the new contractor safety training programme introduced in 2006. The project aims to raise safety awareness and encourage safe working, but this remains are area of serious concern. The Group has continued close collaboration with other parts of the glass industry and beyond, to improve safety.