Enhancing the health & safety of our employees
The health and safety of our workforce is a core priority and we apply the same standards at all our offices and factories across the world. Our goal is the total elimination of all employee and contractor fatalities with continual improvements in our overall health and safety performance. Our internal global health and safety standards are based on the international standard OHSAS 18001.
Our performance in 2007
A key measure of our progress is our total recordable accident frequency rate (TRFR), which in 2007 decreased to 0.26 accidents per 100 000 hours worked from 0.33 in 2006.
*Accident Frequency Rate (AFR) – Workplace accidents resulting in time off work or some temporary restriction in the work that the injured person can undertake. Total Recordable Frequency Rates (TRFR) – All workplace accidents, excluding only those that require simple first aid treatment. In line with industry best practice, we include in our definition of an 'employee', temporary staff and contractors who work under our direct supervision.
Most regrettably, in 2007, three employees and one contractor lost their lives. The lessons from these incidents have been learned and are being communicated throughout the organisation.
** In addition to the recordable fatality data in the chart, where such accidents may be deemed associated with our operations, Unilever requires its organisations to report fatal accidents involving members of the public, and those which occur at third-party contract manufacturers where they are producing goods and services for Unilever. In common with the other companies in our industrial sector, these incidents are only reportable internally.
Improving our performance
We are developing new indicators for occupational health performance. Following a successful project in the UK during 2007, a global pilot is being undertaken during 2008 on leading and lagging indicators. These include compliance with health and safety audits, as well as the prevalence of occupational illness.
Safe travel & transport
Safe travel and transport continue to be a priority for us. The greatest challenge we face is in countries that lack basic road safety infrastructure and enforcement. Our intention is to send a clear signal to our workforce that safe conduct while driving is a matter we take seriously.
In 2006 we established our Safe Driving Teams initiative. This was implemented in all our regions throughout 2007. Led by a senior manager in each country, these teams identified local risk, then developed and implemented tough safe driving standards. These were published in local languages so they could be communicated to all our drivers. We have also banned the use of mobile phones while driving except for a limited number of drivers who are provided with proper hands free equipment.
We also require all our professional drivers worldwide to have regular medical check-ups to ensure their fitness to drive.
Where accidents do occur we are keen that any lessons can be learned swiftly and the findings shared throughout the company. In 2007 we began work on a new data collection system to develop a set of performance indicators for safe driving. These will capture data on all collisions, whether they lead to injury or not.
Site safety
Site safety is another issue of paramount importance for us at Unilever. Throughout 2007 we have had a special focus on any sites where safety records have fallen short of our high standards. Here we have seen significant improvements.
Good internal governance systems are necessary to check the robustness of our safety processes. Throughout 2007 we have been strengthening these processes to ensure compliance with our own internal health and safety standards. This is essential across all our factories and offices, but especially important where manufacturing processes involve hazardous materials.
Looking forward
Our overarching goal for 2008 is to continue improving our health and safety performance across all areas of our business. Because safe travel and transport remains a key area, we will continue to embed our global standard on safe travel in vehicles, and develop our data collection on collisions.
Promoting employee health & well-being
We believe that healthy employees contribute to a healthy company. Our Personal Vitality charter was finalised and rolled out in 2007. This focuses on employee health and well-being and ways of working. We now have a global framework of health and well-being benefits which each Unilever operating company will have to make available to all its employees by 2010. This framework involves coaching people on their exercise, nutrition and mental resilience, and monitoring their progress through an initial check-up and six-monthly follow ups.
Our challenge is to encourage people to change their behaviour and sustain new habits, whether it be how often they exercise or their eating habits. We have found that if we can keep people motivated on a programme of change for six months, then the habits are likely to stay. Another important factor is leadership behaviours. People at work tend to mirror patterns of behaviour set by their managers, which is why all our programmes start with senior managers.
These programmes have important short- and long-term business as well as health benefits. In the short term we expect to see healthier, more motivated and productive employees, with lower levels of absence due to ill health. The long-term benefits are in lower healthcare costs for companies and society. A study we conducted in the UK, and which was published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, estimated that the return on investment for these kinds of employee well-being programmes is in the region of £3.70 for every £1 invested.
Supporting work-life balance
New state-of-the-art video conferencing facilities at four of our regional headquarters are also encouraging people to travel less and improve their work-life balance. During 2007 alone, these facilities have saved €1.5 million in travel costs, and resulted in lowering our business travel carbon footprint by 425 tonnes of CO2. We are in the planning phase for installing similar facilities in 15 more locations around the world.
In 2007 we also made new software available to enable employees to hold virtual meetings through online discussion forums, document-sharing and presentation capability. The software was used successfully for a virtual global conference of Unilever's top 50 human resources managers, who would otherwise have had to travel from around the world for a 2-day meeting.
