Safety first
A safe workplace is about something as self-evident as no-one’s health or safety being put at risk by their going to work. Our employees are our most important resource, and the aim is for health and safety efforts to lead to a zero injury workplace.
Systematic work on safety produces ripple effects in the form of motivated employees, stable production, and higher product quality. Creating safe workplaces is essential for sustainable and profitable operations and thus a strategic priority for the company.
Our strategic work for a safe and stable production
Developing a safe working environment
Our systematic work to develop leadership, competencies, behaviors, and processes has resulted in a long-term trend with a decreasing number of injuries. We continue our systematic improvement work with safety and are aware that change takes time.
Work to develop a safe working environment covers the whole business. Partly it is about using standards and procedures that clearly set out how each task must be carried out to create and followed-up. Partly, it is about developing attitudes and behaviors that ensure a safe working environment.
Everything starts with an orderly approach
We all have a shared responsibility for fostering a safety culture that promotes individual responsibility, caring, intervening, and speaking out. The basis for such a safety culture is to prevent and minimize risks, strengthen the role of leadership, and create a mindset in everyone about their own responsibility to always put safety first.
All contractors must follow and respect the Supplier Code of Conduct, other procedures, and behaviors for a safe workplace. Our responsibility includes clarifying expectations and the demands we make and following up and acting where shortcomings are found on the part of contractors.
Preventive work starts with an orderly approach and the help of standards, routines and instructions that specify how to perform the tasks in a safe way.
Our policies and guidelines are available here.
On the right path with the help of risk observations
Risk observations is one initiative that could contribute to injury-free operations. This is about taking joint responsibility to see, act and report a risk before an incident or accident occurs. It requires proactive behavior, and all employees and contractors are encouraged to identify and report unsafe situations or actions.
The target going forward is to increase the number of risk observations reported per person year by year.
Visible leadership is a key
Leadership and engagement are crucial for building a solid safety culture. Raising managers’ competence with systematic work on safety is central, but their presence and visibility in the daily work is also of great importance.
We follow up on safety walks by the management team at every mill to engage in direct dialogue with employees and contractors on the importance of safety in their daily work.
Managers in the North American operations are responsible for conducting at least one Key Safety Performance Audit (KSPA) every month, based on a high-risk task, to verify that a life-critical safety policy is followed.
Continued focus on building a safety culture with our contractors
All contractors must respect and follow Billerud’s procedures for a safe workplace, and in recent years we have taken important steps when it comes to coordinating procedures and behaviors for safe workplaces with contractors. This has resulted in a decreasing injury rate over time.
Billerud strives to ensure that everyone working on our premises receives adequate safety training. The contractors are obliged to report all injuries, incidents and observed risks and this information is included in reporting and follow-up.
Ensuring information and cyber security
Cyber crime has become a rapidly growing concern for the industry. Billerud has chosen a systematic way of working to protect IT infrastructure, information assets and data privacy, based on the information security standards ISO 27001 and NIST. In addition to this, several initiatives to raise employee awareness is performed regularly. Controls have also been added to the information security management system to ensure that the company fulfills the requirements of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and that cybercrime-related risks are managed. The controls and their order of priority are based on analysis of the identified risks and consequences. Risk analyses are carried out at several levels in the company, and the risks are addressed in governance and management forums regarding the company’s information and system resources, including production technology (Mill IT). Information and cyber security are governed by the CISO on behalf of the CIO. Reporting to Audit Committee is performed every quarter. The CISO resides in the Finance & IT department where the CIO is directly reporting to the Executive Management.