Safety at James Hardie
James Hardie is committed to creating a safe working environment and has set safety objectives to:
– achieve an incident rate of less than 2 and a severity rate of less than 20 (“2 and 20”);
– eliminate serious bodily harm; and
– achieve zero fatalities.
Recognising that the safety of employees is critical to its Environment, Social and Governance goals, James Hardie’s Board has made Safety one of the Scorecard1 measures used to determine payments to executives under the company’s incentive plans.
Safety performance in fiscal year 2010
USA and Europe Fibre Cement
– Incident rate 1.1
– Severity rate 19.97
The USA and Europe Fibre Cement business recorded 16 incidents in fiscal year 2010, a 42% reduction in the number of incidents compared to fiscal year 2009. For the first time, its incident and severity
rates were below the safety goals of “2 and 20”.
The significant safety improvements achieved in fiscal year 2010 were the result of a concerted effort to eliminate the top three types of incidents recorded or identified in near-miss reports in fiscal year 2009. These were slips and falls, strains, and machine-related incidents.
To overcome these incidents, the region developed site-specific safety plans and safety observation programs; implemented pre-shift stretching throughout the group; and focused on improved housekeeping to reduce trip hazards.
Asia Pacific Fibre Cement
– Incident rate 2.7
– Severity rate 65.1
Asia Pacific Fibre Cement improved its safety performance during the fiscal year but still has significant progress to make relative to the company’s 2 and 20 objective, and the region’s objective to be best practice within James Hardie.
The region recorded 22 incidents, a 66% reduction on the fiscal year 2009 result. By emphasising the leading indicators of near-miss reports and hazard ientification in fiscal year 2010, the region’s businesses broadened safety participation and ownership and created momentum in its core safety programs.
The region implemented pre-shift stretching, mandatory personal protective equipment requirements and core safety training programs throughout the plants.
Safety performance in fiscal year 2011
Guided by safety managers, safety co-ordinators or Environment, Health and Safety officers based at each location, we will continue to work to instil a safe culture in the business.
Our global safety programs will involve:
– continuation of regular safety audits;
– behavioural safety programs such as manual handling;
– identification and management of safety hazards; and
– developing specific areas of “safety expertise” at different plants that can be shared within the company.
Definitions
A plant’s incident rate is the number of recordable incidents that occur per 200,000 hours worked there (equivalent to the number of incidents per 100 employees per year). A recordable incident is an incident that requires the employee to seek professional medical treatment which may or may not lead to lost or restricted workdays for the employee and the facility.
The severity rate for any plant is then the number of days of lost or restricted duty (when the employees carries out lighter duties than required in their normal role) from recordable incidents per 200,000 hours worked at the plant (equivalent to the number of days lost or restricted because of injury per 100 employees per year).
A lower incident rate and severity rate is normally regarded as an indicator of a plant that is safer for employees.
