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 working environment and promoting health is one of the major responsibilities of a company.
During the past few years we have made 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.
Among many activities the Safety Improvement Visits (SIV) 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 made a detailed plan for improving over the previous year.
Since then the system has progressed further, and each mill continuously develops further plans to close the gap in system performance.
In 2006, Myllykoski launched the Safety Recognition and Award Program, which aims 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 acts as an example for all employees.
Myllykoski focuses on best practices – identifying mandatory practices for each facility – and on improving the safety systems by implementing needed changes.
Besides all safety activities, Myllykoski encourages and supports its employees to remain healthy by various actions at the workplace as well as in their private life.
“Health management is one of our main corporate goals. Of course, as a company, we cannot and do not want to dictate to anybody how they should live their lives. But what we can do as a company is to promote health awareness, giving food for thought and providing practical tips to support a healthy lifestyle – not forgetting about fun."
Werner Manzinger, Group Director, Human Resources
Find more information on recent developments in our sustainability report.