Health and safety
Our aim is to provide a safe and healthy environment for our employees and visitors to our premises and to keep the number of working hours lost through health and safety incidents to a minimum.
We monitor both the number of workplace injuries and illnesses and the number of “lost-time” workplace injuries and set a target to achieve rates of less than half of the averages for our industry.
We have our own behaviour-based safety programme, Safety STAR (Safety Through Accountability and Recognition), which requires supervisors to encourage safe work practices, promotes regular safety observations, encourages and holds employees accountable for working safely and regularly asks employees for their ideas and suggestions for improving safety at their facility. With Akron Brass achieving Safety STAR status, our two largest distribution centres and largest manufacturing centre in the US now adhere to this programme.
One of our US businesses: MCM recorded no injuries and three of our US businesses (MCM, Newark and TPC Wire & Cable) qualified for the US National Safety Council Occupational Safety Excellence Awards, having achieved lost-time injury rates of less than half the industry average.
All our UK businesses’ facilities are accredited to OHSAS 18001: 1999, the internationally recognised standard for health and safety management systems.
The estimated cost incurred by our US operations for injuries resulting in days away from work in 2008 was $645,000. This cost is based on a $43,000 average cost per disabling injury (as estimated by the US National Safety Council). This cost includes wage losses, medical expenses, administration expenses and employment costs.
In Europe and Asia Pacific, excluding the Liège distribution centre, the estimated cost for injuries resulting in days away from work in 2008 was £12,582 applying UK estimates of £2,097 per occurrence, based on Health and Safety Executive figures. For the Liège distribution centre, estimated costs for injuries resulting in days away from work for 2008 was £39,843 based on the same estimates per occurrence.