A culture of health and safety
An important part of our HR strategy is to create and sustain a culture of health and safety with our main goal that "every person returns home safely every day". To provide a safe workplace working environment and promoting health is one of the major responsibilities of a company.
During the last years we took huge efforts to implement and improve this culture.
Starting with a group of safety specialists and supported by Myllykoski’s year of safety in 2005 with a lot of safety activities the process and project lead to the OHSAS 18001 certification (occupational health and safety management system) in 2005 to 2007 for all European mills.
One of the main activities during 2006 and 2007 were the Safety Improvement Visits (SIV) which were conducted at every site. This internal audit was designed by the Safety Steering Team and its purpose was to identify best practices, assess facility systems that have the biggest impact on safety, identify gaps in safety performance and enhance action planning to close those gaps. These audits were reviewed with each mill’s senior management team, and each site submitted its action steps for improving over the previous year.
In 2007 we had a second round of Safety Improvement Visits, and every mill improved its rating – most mills to a significant degree. The scores were distributed and new action plans were worked out for 2008. In 2008, the system will make the transition to a self-auditing system, and each mill will develop further plans to close its gap in system performance.
“We believe in the power of people – in their creativity,
innovation, and leadership capabilities. We believe in the
power of inclusion – that each person can make a significant
difference in the results of our mission by completing
his or her role and also in taking the additional step
of seeking opportunities. Our strength comes from our
diverse backgrounds, experience and way of thinking.”
- Ted Helberg, HR Director, Myllykoski North America -
In 2006, Myllykoski launched the Safety Recognition and Award Program, which intends to promote safe working practices and increase safety awareness. This is an annual program where at the year end written reports from each mill are submitted to the Group Safety Steering Team, which assesses these reports and recommends the award winners to the Board of Directors.
The Chairman’s Award is presented to the mill or department with the best overall performance in safety.
The Myllykoski Safety Star Award is presented to the mill that demonstrated the biggest improvement in safety metrics.
The Innovation and Leadership in Safety – Award is presented by the General Managers to individuals and/or teams in each mill for demonstrating outstanding ideas and behaviour in Safety and therefore are archetypes for all employees.
Due to the safety efforts of all Myllykoski employees, the frequency rate (number of incidents per million hours worked) decreased by 2.5 percent in 2007. It reflects a reduction of nearly 20.5 percent from 2005 when Myllykoski increased the group safety efforts. The severity rate (number of lost hours per million man-hours worked) was also reduced by 5.3 percent in 2007.
In 2008, Myllykoski will focus on best practices – identifying mandatory practices for each facility – and on improving the safety systems by implementing needed changes identified in the Safety Improvement Visits.
Beside all safety activities, Myllykoski encourages and supports its employees to remain healthy by various actions at the workplace as well as for their private life (stop smoking vitamins, vaccination, moving in everyday life, ergonomics at work).