Providing a safe and healthy workplace
Making sure that our employees and contractors return home from work safely each day is more important than anything else.
We are committed to ensuring zero harm to our employees, contractors and the communities in which we operate. This is integral to our business process and is laid down in our health and safety policies, standards and working procedures.
Our journey towards safety excellence was initiated with guidance from DuPont, a world leader in safety, and from other companies recognised for their high standards in health and safety including Australian-based BlueScope Steel.
We aspire to be the health and safety benchmark for the steel industry globally, and our goal is to achieve a lost time injury frequency (LTIF) rate of 0.4 or lower by 2012.
Working together
Every Tata Steel Group board meeting includes a detailed review of health and safety issues.
A board-level Safety, Health and Environment Committee provides overall leadership in SH&E matters throughout our global business.
Each of the Group’s four regional businesses has a well-established and comprehensive health and safety policy, with supporting principles, standards and procedures, and a Tata Steel group-wide health and safety policy has been introduced from January 2011. Clear objectives for process safety, occupational safety and health are embedded within the health and safety management plans of each business.
In October 2009, the World Steel Association (worldsteel) recognised Tata Steel for demonstrating excellence in health and safety, particularly in relation to its contract workforce programme. The construction of the new blast furnace at Jamshedpur recorded 35 million accident-free hours.
In India, we have established safety committees involving employees at all levels, helping to ingrain a strong sense of personal responsibility across functions. These have contributed significantly to the formulation and upgrading of policies, strategies and standards. Our lost time injury frequency rate in India has improved from 3.5 to 0.56 in the last four years, and we are determined to continue to drive it lower.
Tata Steel in Europe has a Health and Safety Management System (HSMS) consisting of a comprehensive array of tools, standards and procedures. The HSMS encompasses 15 fundamental principles including accountability, management of change, and audit and review, and is based on industry best practice. Our lost time injury frequency rate in Europe improved by 16% in 2009/10 versus the previous year.
In Thailand and China, a programme called Safety Excellence Journey was rolled out during the year at the Group’s wire mills, as well as some of Tata Steel’s associated companies such as Tayo Rolls (cast iron and steel roll manufacturer), TRF (material handling solutions company), and The Tinplate Company (packaging steel).
NatSteel Singapore also embarked on a two year, DuPont-guided safety excellence journey in 2009. Measures taken to date include the continuous active involvement of senior management, safety training, establishment of a safety council, and formation of risk containment groups to identify and contain high-risk activities. STOP (Solve This Ongoing Problem) teams observe safety behaviour and interact with employees on safety. NatSteel’s subsidiaries will gradually become fully aligned with the DuPont safety management system.
Mining
Tata Steel strives constantly to improve and extend our systems for managing the significant safety risks associated with the extraction of raw materials as we expand global operations to enhance our raw materials self-sufficiency.
Underground operations pose particular safety and health risks. Mine locations, by their very nature, are remote. Miners work in confined spaces and deploy explosives to extract minerals.
We have adopted best mine rescue procedures at all our mining units. The Tata Steel Safety Excellence Management and Review process is used to proactively assess risks and hazards and control them through multi-level safety action plans.
The mining division’s safety goals are in line with the rest of Tata Steel: zero fatality in its operations and a lost time injury frequency rate of 0.4 or better by 2012.