Safety
The health and safety of Suominen’s employees is our key priority. We focus on accident prevention and building a strong safety culture. Safety is one of our key people-related targets, and our aim is to have zero lost time accidents.
In 2022, two lost time accidents (LTA) occurred at Suominen sites (4 in 2021) and six out of our eight sites were able to reach the zero LTA target in 2022. The accident frequency rate (AFR) was 1.53 (3.04) and the accident severity rate was 0.06 (0.05). There were no work-related fatal accidents among neither employees nor contractors at our sites. Safety monitoring is part of our daily activities, and we keep record of all work-related accidents and near misses and identify their causes.
The safety management systems are certified according to the ISO 45001 standard in seven* out of the eight sites and the remaining site is scheduled to be certified during 2023.
Our safety work
Suominen’s safety work is based on preventive actions. We develop safety at the workplace according to the principle of continuous improvement and implementation of best practices. In improving safety, Suominen places particular emphasis on influencing attitudes, behavior, and operating models.
All Suominen employees take part in safety training during their onboarding period and in addition, employees in production roles receive regular safety training. Suominen has implemented Life Saving Rules and a Behavior Based Safety program. The Behavior Based Safety program kept rolling for the ninth year in a row in 2022. The program emphasizes the individual’s own responsibility in safety and focuses on influencing the attitude and motivation of individuals. The program includes safety walks, in which an employee walks through the premises, identifying both safe and unsafe behaviors and conditions, and then engages in an open discussion with other employees. During 2022, 11,320 safety walks were performed globally, and altogether 6,102 unsafe actions or conditions were identified to be rectified.
In 2022, we carried out an awareness campaign to prevent hand injuries, which are one of the most common types of injuries within the production roles. As a result, we saw a notable decrease in hand injuries during the second half of the year.
Safety during the pandemic
We continued to monitor the development of the pandemic and adjusted our safety measures accordingly. The COVID-19 task force stayed active in 2022.
*The production area of Windsor Locks’ site is certified according to ISO 45001 by Ahlstrom.