Employee health and safety
Reducing occupational injury
Coloplast works as hard as ever to reduce occupational injuries. This year, we integrated our newest business area, Voice and Respiratory Care, into our injury reporting. Our lost-time injury frequency slightly increased with a result in 2022/23 of 2.6 ppm, which accounts for a total of 70 incidents. Across Coloplast, the most common injuries for white- and blue-collar employees are incidents due to trips, falls, traffic accidents and heavy lifting. We experience a higher level of incidents post COVID-19 and are working hard to address this to reach our 2025 ambition of 2.0 ppm.
We strive to foster a positive safety mindset among all employees by championing four key safety behaviours globally across sites and at all management layers:
• You see it, you own it
• Think twice
• Dare to care
• Stay focused
Since initiating our first SafePlan more than five years ago, we have seen a significant strengthening of our safety culture with a sevenfold increase in reported near-miss accidents and safety observations. A proactive KPI for production sites and larger distribution centres has been defined, and local targets have been set. To support the proactive KPI, Coloplast has several channels for reporting and raising awareness.
In 2022/23 Coloplast recognised the United Nations’ International Day for Health & Safety at Work with a global safety campaign focused on preventing slips, trips and falls. Our production and distribution sites worldwide activated this campaign with a range of local activities aimed at identifying hazards and encouraging safe behaviours.
Reducing repetitive work
Coloplast emphasises an ergonomically correct workplace setup whenever manual labour is required in production. Therefore, Coloplast systematically works to reduce repetitive work and reduce the strain from unavoidable repetitive work by rotating workstations. Coloplast has developed a system for measuring this type of work, which enables improvements and track progress. Since 2008, Coloplast has more than halved the amount of stations considered to require ‘high’ and ‘very high’ repetitive work.
Coloplast’s health and safety management system is certified according to Occupational Health and Safety standard, ISO 45001.
Offering healthy choices
Coloplast performs workplace assessments globally, and through the Coloplast Life programme, Coloplast provides options to make healthy choices for employees. For example, local activities as trying an electric bike or encouraging more movement during the workday in a “stand more sit less”- campaign. To maintain well-being for employees during COVID-19, local activities like daily online exercises were arranged. Other initiatives include free medical screenings and health checks at Coloplast’s Nyírbátor site and free flu vaccinations at Coloplast UK. In Denmark, Coloplast has a stress policy with stress-counselling.