Safety: Saipol's priority
Safety is Saipol’s priority. All employees and subcontractors are mobilised to improve safety every day at our industrial and administrative sites. Every year, the safety programme is revised and supplemented in order to reduce the number of injuries by applying the best safety standards and practices. The aim is to achieve 0 injuries.
‘We’re working to ensure that everyone gets home safely’.
between 2022 and 2024
at Saipol sites
to reinforce good practice
in the field
Managing safety
An initial safety plan was implemented with Avril’s support between 2013 and 2018, and helped to reduce the Group’s TF2 by a factor of 5 over the period. It was followed by a second plan, called We Care, between 2018 and 2023. We Care focuses on 3 areas:
- Axis 1: Preventing risks and continuously improving safety – with regular sharing of experience and best practice, discipline in applying the golden rules of safety and life-saving procedures, safety governance at each site, etc.
- Axis 2: Involve managers – by carrying out regular Safety Field Visits (VST) to encourage good practice, a training plan, a safety induction programme for new recruits, etc.
- Axis 3: Improve industrial safety – by integrating safety at the outset of all projects and investments.
From 2024 onwards, the We Care 2 programme will complement this approach, integrating safety leadership and ownership, as well as improving health and quality of life at work as vectors for safety.
Safety training and not letting your guard down
Saipol has a number of tools at its disposal to make progress on safety, starting with the establishment of rules and procedures, regular training and collective awareness campaigns.
Here are just a few examples of the tools deployed:
- The golden rules, communicated and displayed to everyone, set out the 10 points to be respected as soon as you enter Saipol.
- They are supplemented by the ‘PQSLV’, for Procedures That Save Your Life, which detail how to act in specific conditions on industrial sites.
- Safety field visits (VST) are carried out in order to :
- Develop employees’ ability to analyse risks and take action at their own level,
- Improve the safety of operations: reinforce good practices and eliminate risky practices and situations,
- Maintain and increase the level of health and safety requirements,
- Set aside a specific time to talk about safety.
In addition, in all day-to-day activities, and particularly in the plant, employees are trained and must follow procedures to prevent accidents, whatever their status: employee, new arrival, temporary worker or external company.
Nevertheless, as risky situations can arise, every event that could have led to an accident, known as a ‘near miss’, is analysed and shared with the teams.
It’s a combination of collective and individual actions that enable progress to be made on safety for all.
Measuring and improving safety
All the safety measures taken have helped to reduce the number of accidents. The measurement indicator currently used is the ‘TF2’, the frequency rate: it relates the number of accidents without time off work and with time off work to the total number of hours worked over the last 12 months, and per 1,000,000 hours worked.
This indicator and its evolution are communicated to all Saipol teams on a monthly basis, and each accident is analysed and feedback is provided to prevent further accidents.
The value of the frequency rate is therefore directly linked to the time spent without a work-related accident occurring on a site.
However, this rate in no way reflects the probability of a serious or major accident that has not yet occurred. This is why it is accompanied by actions aimed at preventing the most frequent accidents in the workplace, and actions aimed at preventing the most serious accidents.
Investing in safety
Every investment, whether related to the maintenance or optimisation of industrial processes, is first and foremost an opportunity to improve safety and regulatory compliance.
Safety and regulatory compliance are key criteria right from the design stage. They are also criteria that are incorporated into investments and maintenance, or during technical shutdowns of sites.
Between 2022 and 2024, Saipol has invested more than €210 million in its industrial sites. These investments serve not only to enhance Saipol’s performance and innovation, but also to improve management tools, ergonomics, traffic flow, protection systems, etc…. These are all advances that benefit the well-being of our teams, the safety of our facilities and people, and the environment.
The industrial roadmap, defined for 2030, provides a vision and structures the company’s commitment to improving its performance and, more generally, achieving operational excellence in four are
Communicating and learning from others, with humility
Despite all the efforts made to improve safety, accidents can still happen from time to time. As with every ‘near miss’, Saipol is committed to analysing every event that represents an opportunity to learn and progress in order to improve safety within the company and more widely within the industry.
The safety culture is based on training, daily awareness-raising and humility: accepting that there is always room for improvement, in particular by listening to employees and sharing ideas with others.
Together, this dynamic helps to strengthen collective safety over the long term.
Safety in action
