Wellbeing and safety at work
Our operations are guided by Valio’s global safety policy and safety management system procedures compliant with the requirements of the ISO 45001 standard. Our long-term goal is zero work injuries and accidents.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT BY ALL VALIO EMPLOYEES
Promoting wellbeing and safety at work is a joint effort between employees and the employer. Valio employees can participate in proactive advancement of work safety and wellbeing in many ways, including through workplace safety committees and personnel representative collaboration, as well as a Group-level personnel cooperation group. Additionally, one of the top-level themes in the Valio Voice survey is health and wellbeing.
We continuously assess and improve our ways of operating based on the information gained through risk assessments, workplace surveys, incident reports, accident investigations and occupational health statistics. Other key forums for continuous improvement include local and Group-level steering groups for occupational health, networks of occupational safety managers and production plant managers, and operational management groups.
IT ALL STARTS WITH INDUCTION
Safety is one of the key themes in employee induction and supervisor training. Every new employee receives training on safety issues when they start working at Valio and safety instructions are available in the language spoken by employees. We provide annual training and refresher training for production and warehouse employees. We also make sure that various statutory qualifications and training, e.g. for electrical and hot work, are in place. Our Take 5 for Safety model is strongly guided by the principle that no work should be started before its safety is ensured.
We encourage personnel to immediately report any hazardous situation they observe and to log it in the shared observation programme. Once it has been logged, the supervisor is responsible for the proper processing of the observation and for determining the corrective actions. We log and investigate all Valio occupational accidents globally. In Finland, accidents occurring during travel between home and the workplace are also counted as occupational accidents. All employees in Finland can track accident reports.
We develop operations continuously based on new information and observations.
External contractors also work at Valio’s sites, both on a permanent and an occasional basis. The actual supervision of the work, the oversight and the management of the external contractor’s staff is the responsibility of each company, but we provide special training for all external contractors operating in the shared worksite and we maintain continuous communication to ensure safety.