Iggesund Paperboard’s mill in Workington, UK, which employs more than more than 320 staff, did not have a single accident that led to an absence during 2019.
In comparison, the company’s mill in Iggesund, Sweden, which has about 800 employees, had nine accidents which led to absences in the same year.
David Inglesfield, health and safety manager at Workington, puts this success down to a tradition of systematic and proactive work to create an accident-free workplace.
‘We’ve built up a safety culture over many years and we’re constantly working hard to keep it alive and well,’ said Mr Inglesfield. ‘Safety is everyone’s responsibility and requires commitment. Everyone also need to have the courage to challenge unsafe behaviours. A safe working environment must always be at the top of every meeting agenda to keep the issue fresh in people’s minds.’
Other key ingredients in the mill’s success are learning from incidents, analysing the causes and conducting ongoing checks, thus leading to improvements. Work planning to ensure that controls and follow-up are in place is also vital at the Workington mill, which makes Iggesund Paperboard’s Incada paperboard.
‘You have to be aware that there’s always a need to improve and that you’re never at an acceptable level,’ Mr Inglesfield explained.
‘Workington is a great role model for proactive, and successful, health and safety work. For example, they have a procedure in place whereby they start investigating a workplace accident straight after it occurs. We take care to continuously learn from each other so we can prevent accidents at all our workplaces,’ said Therese Rahm, communication manager at Iggesund Paperboard in Sweden.
