Corporate responsibility

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Health and safety is our number one priority.

Safety

Our ambition is to be the safest company in our sector. This is a challenge that we are determined to achieve. The long-term goal is to have no fatalities or lost time injuries, and our company-wide safety programme, Journey to Zero, is designed to reach this goal.

We measure our safety performance through what is known as the lost-time injury frequency rate or LTIFR.  This is the number of lost time injuries per million hours worked, for both employees and contractors. We investigate all accidents in detail, and reports of fatalities are reviewed by the Group Management Board, so that lessons can be learned throughout the whole company. Some of our sites – like our Jubail project under construction in Saudi Arabia – have already operated for more than 10 million man-hours without any accidents, and this is a great example for all our operations.

ArcelorMittal’s Journey to Zero programme is about preventing accidents by understanding risks and hazards, and taking appropriate action. This involves setting up advanced safety monitoring systems, which take into account both the physical and human aspects of workplace safety. We want to establish a culture of shared vigilance, in which everyone takes responsibility not just for their own safety, but also for the safety of those around them, including the many contractors who work at our plants. Unfortunately the fatality rate for contractors is still high. Therefore we are making a special effort to encourage a safety-first mindset among our contract workers, and this resulted in a reduction in their lost-time injury frequency rate which reached the same level as that of our own employees in 2012.

We are actively promoting a ‘Courageous Leadership’ mindset in our mining business and supporting this with a series of workshops, training sessions, and ongoing communications programmes. At its core is the goal of zero injuries and zero fatalities, and a belief that courageous leadership can help us achieve this.

We work intensively with our trade unions on safety improvements, and our joint global health and safety committee meets once a quarter. This is supported by similar committees at each of our production units. We’re the only company in our sector to have such a joint partnership with our unions, and it published its first report, “Together for safety”, in June 2011. This set out the progress that’s been made, and made further recommendations for the future.

We also run a company-wide health and safety day every year, which usually coincides with the International Labour Organisation’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work.

Health and Safety performance is a key element of our executive remuneration policy, with 20% of our senior management’s bonus dependent on the group’s fatality and lost time injury frequency rate. This extends to other managers’ within the group, with up to 10% of annual performance bonus dependent on their group or unit’s safety performance.

This web-page was part of Deloitte's CR report assurance scope. View Deloitte LLPs assurance statement