New campaign builds on Knauf Insulation's safety success as company celebrates World Day for Safety and Health at Work
Knauf Insulation EMEA marked 77 days without a single recordable accident on April 9 — a significant achievement for a region that clocks up 680,000 working hours every month across all our sites.
The landmark follows a record-breaking year for the company, which saw a 23% year-on-year reduction in our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) in 2020 and a decrease in Lost Time Accidents (LTAs). Last year 10 plants achieved more than 12 months without an LTA.
Our Health and Safety teams have been working to make these successes future proof and our TRIR has decreased by 45% in the past 12 months to end March. In addition, to ensure safety comes first everywhere, almost 23,000 safety actions have been taken in the same period across our manufacturing sites with hazard-spotting tours up 50%, safety observations increasing by 21% and safety dialogues up by 85%.
Speaking today to celebrate International Labour Organization’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work, Jean-Claude Carlin, Member of the Knauf Group Management Committee Insulation Europe/Middle East/Asia said: “We are proud of what we have achieved, but at Knauf Insulation safety is a journey of continuous improvement.”
“We have safe processes and good procedures in place and now it is time to focus on improving behaviour which is responsible for up to 90% of accidents. That is why we launched our ‘Take Care Everywhere’ campaign to raise awareness of the vital role we all play in keeping ourselves and others safe.”
With the help of internal presentations, posters, workshops, online discussions and even a popular video featuring our safety hero Ki, the ‘Take Care Everywhere’ campaign highlights the importance of following the safety principles.
These are: Expect the unexpected — Managing risk keeps us safe • Investigate all incidents — Share lessons learned • Fix risk rapidly — Don’t ignore it. Solve it • Accept mistakes happen — Make work fail-safe • Speak up, listen up — Let’s work together for safety • Stay safe outside work — We take care everywhere • Give transparent feedback — Total honesty is essential • Put safety first. Always — It’s our top priority every day.
‘Take Care Everywhere’ is also the theme adopted by all our sites to celebrate today’s International Labour Organization’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work.
Philippe Coune, our Group HSE Lead for the EMEA region, said: “‘Take Care Everywhere’ marks an important step in our sustainability strategy commitment to put people first and ensures everyone goes home safely at the end of their working day. This is reflected in our 2025 safety target where we would like to reduce our Total Recordable Incident Rate to a maximum of five. We recorded outstanding achievements last year and it is essential that we capitalise on this success this year. I want us to report another record-breaking 12 months of safety in 2021.”
