Improving our safety performance is one of our top management priorities across the business. We have developed additional programmes to improve our safety performance and are reviewing and monitoring our performance more closely than ever before.
Our goal is to embed a zero accident culture. In 2004, we updated our Environment Health and Safety Standards and our EHS Policy and their accompanying management processes and systems. Technical training is provided to embed these standards.
In 2005, we developed a Driver Safety programme to reduce the number of road transport accidents. We also created an EHS leadership training course to ensure that our senior managers understand their accountabilities and responsibilities in this area. This latter course was delivered to over 200 employees across all areas of manufacturing and supply chain. Our EHS leadership training is based on an international version of the highly acclaimed EHS course ("Directing Safely") for senior managers accredited by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
Research has shown that cultural and behavioural change programmes supported by training are a key element in making significant and long lasting change in attitudes to safety at work. We also plan to pilot a Behavioural Based Safety programme at a number of our sites.
We deeply regret that in 2005, seven people were fatally injured while working for us in our various businesses across the world. Of these, six were sales related - involving traffic accidents while travelling for work - and one was at a manufacturing site. This is entirely unacceptable and must change. It is therefore the highest priority for both management and colleague action.
Measuring and monitoring our performance
We use the accepted international standard, LTIFR (Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate) to monitor and track our workplace health and safety. This is a standard industry method of measuring injuries, sometimes referred to as Lost Workday Case Rate. Our present performance against this method of monitoring is disappointing. Although we showed modest improvement in 2005, we recognise that we still have a long way to go and are working hard to improve this. LTIFR is one of our Key Performance Indicators and we aim to reduce our LTIFR to 0.5 by 2010.