Arkema joins in the celebration of the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, which since 2003 has been organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on April 28 every year with the aim of preventing occupational accidents and diseases. Arkema is putting in place a large number of initiatives to promote and heighten awareness of a "safety culture" across its sites around the world.
Safety: an absolute priority
Arkema places safety and the protection of health at the very core of its concerns. Safety is one of the five commitments of the Group’s CSR strategy which aims to make Arkema one of the high performance players of the chemical industry: "being exemplary", not only with regard to our employees but also with regard to all of the Group’s stakeholders.
The cornerstone of Arkema’s safety initiative involves risk prevention and training. The Group’s global safety initiative is based on three complementary components: technical, organizational and human.
Determined to enhance the safety of its personnel and develop a safety culture shared by all employees, Arkema is committed to promoting responsible behavior by drawing on a number of resources, including:
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The Safety in Action program, a mobilization program based on communication and exchange
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The “SafeStart®" an initiative consisting of observing oneself and other people to identify critical states that can lead to critical errors
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"The Essentials", a set of simple and clear safety rules known to and applicable by everyone and which correspond to everyday situations
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The accident prevention program based on peer observation
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Flash-audits to enable swift collection of safety data
The “Our safety culture” module places value on the safety heritage of the various Arkema business units, as well as the wide range of tools available.
“Safety Academy”: an original training module
In order to consolidate the Group’s safety culture and work towards a “zero accident” target, Arkema has set up an ambitious worldwide in-house training program called “Safety Academy”. The first module of this long-term training course is designed as a structured exchange that encourages the participants to think about the most judicious strategies to help achieve zero accident.
Everyone takes Arkema’s global safety issues fully on board, while the Group’s safety policy is enhanced by the participants’ own experiences.
With this tool, everyone can benchmark their position against a common frame of reference, whatever their job function or the site where they work.
Safety Academy makes the zero accident target a common goal that everyone can aim for.
Safety at Arkema: conclusive results
Since 2006, as a result of actions on the ground and the rollout of a safety culture involving every employee, safety records of the Group have made significant progress.
The number of accidents with or without lost time of salaries within the Group per million man-hours has dropped from 8.4 in 2006 to 1.9 in 2014.
The Cary site in the United States has celebrated 10 years without accident
The Castellazo Bormida site in Italy has aggregated 9 years without accident
The Chateauroux site in France (in French only) has recorded 7 years without accident
The exemplary records of these sites demonstrate that zero accident is possible when every Group employee plays their part.
Zero accident is within our reach, as many Arkema sites have already shown. With the Safety Academy, this objective is now anchored in a concerted safety culture.