Health and safety

The safety of our workers, visitors and the public is key to our long-term success. We strive to achieve our goal of zero harm by managing our activities to eliminate incidents, minimise risk and promote excellent performance.

Highlight

90% year-on-year reduction in safety incidents


Challenge

Route to market security


We believe a safe and healthy workplace is both the fundamental right of every person and a business imperative.

Over three years, there has been a significant and sustained improvement in the safety performance of contractors undertaking civil and construction work at Tiger Brands' sites after implementing our enhanced contract management guidelines. Clear communication upfront ensures service providers and their leadership teams are fully aligned with our safety policy and guidelines. Instead of acting as enforcers, we facilitate by providing assistance and support to service providers, and creating the space for effective safety collaboration and learning. This engagement takes place at both relationship and contractual levels.

Analysing lost-time injuries at our manufacturing units highlights that behaviour-based incidents are our key challenge. We are focused on strengthening the organisational safety culture to change mindsets and habits, and eliminate risky behaviours.

Our group health and safety policy stipulates our responsibility for maintaining productive workplaces by minimising the risk of accidents, injury and exposure to health hazards for our own people, associates and contractors. This responsibility is defined in operating standards throughout the group. Our manufacturing facilities follow the requirements and principles of the internationally recognised Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 standard as the framework of an effective system.


The group chief executive officer is ultimately responsible for the safety of employees. He reports to the risk and sustainability committee as well as the audit committee on these matters. Dedicated committees, led by supply chain executives and site management, are responsible for implementing health and safety measures at manufacturing sites.

Rigorous operational controls manage known risks and align with international best practice. An accredited independent risk management company assesses implementation and adherence, and provides third-party verification. Any identified non-conformance is assessed and risk mitigation implemented. In addition, compliance audits are conducted annually – spanning applicable laws and regulations as well as the group's occupational health and safety guidelines – at each manufacturing operation.

Training

Key employees are trained and coached on the job to build the required levels of safety expertise. Programmes run by internal or external safety, health and environment (SHE) specialists are focused on building capability development in this field. Suitable programmes have been agreed for employees, supervisors, SHE coordinators, management and internal audit teams.

To supplement formal training, we have self-auditing and peer-auditing processes to advance our safety programme.

Safety performance

With a renewed focus on safety, the lost-time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) again declined and no operation recorded an unplanned shutdown for health and safety issues in the reporting period.

Over the years the group has made significant progress in improving safety. LTIFR has declined from 0,67 in FY13 to 0,30 in FY17 while fatalities have declined from two in FY13 to zero in FY17. Similarly, lost-time injuries have declined from 135 to 123.

The group LTIFR target is 0,25 for FY18. In FY17, 29% of our manufacturing sites achieved zero LTIFR, while 43% beat their targets (FY16: 31% and 42% respectively).

Focus in FY18 will be on underperforming sites to ensure their safety performance improves in line with the rest of the group.

Route to market security

This remains a focus area for our industry. Pleasingly, in FY17, we recorded zero fatalities (FY16: four). In collaboration with other companies and provincial authorities, we share best practice and build sustainable solutions for route risk management. We continue to emphasise route risk assessments and comprehensive defensive driver training. This ensures our drivers are aware of identifiable risks they may encounter and understand how to avoid collisions or incidents.

Activities to improve health and safety

Management commitment and leadership continue to make a difference in achieving sustainable improvements in preventing injury and illness. Key initiatives in FY17 include:

  • Identifying the root cause of safety incidents in a disciplined process
  • Further integrating safety into business processes, with line management held personally responsible for safety
  • Including line employees in safety incident investigations and facilitating their participation on audit teams and safety awareness campaigns
  • Relaunching the SHE pillar in line with our manufacturing excellence customs and practices journey
  • Safety skills development programmes and role-based competence matrixes launched for our business units.

Employee wellness

Our employee wellness support programme offers a 24-hour telephonic counselling service, and face-to-face professional counselling. Users can access psychologists, social workers, dieticians, biokineticists, and financial and legal advisers.

Our on-site clinic services include occupational health support, and limited primary healthcare, free to all permanent and temporary employees on site. Our clinic in Ashton (Western Cape, South Africa) is also open to the community. Contracted services include an HIV/Aids management programme and a free advisory and counselling service for all permanent and temporary employees.

We also offer all South African employees voluntary membership to our in-house medical scheme that offers cost-effective comprehensive health cover.