Off-the-Job Injuries: In the Employer's Spotlight

Industrial injuries are always a priority for employers, and "Vision Zero" is a desired goal for all, regardless of the industry. Developing and implementing measures to prevent workplace injuries is a continuous process carried out by enterprises.

However, employee absences due to off-the-job injuries often remain outside the scope of the HSE management system. Yet, "safety culture" is how an employee behaves when no one is "watching" — and it is at home, in their daily lives, where employees act according to their habits, skills, and training.

In 2022, as part of transforming our HSE management system and increasing its transparency, our company identified off-the-job injuries as a source of information on the system's effectiveness. We proceeded from the premise that an employee's domestic injury is a reason to question whether it might be a hidden workplace accident. Furthermore, an employee's absence from the workplace due to injury represents a loss for the enterprise.

A decision was made to develop and implement a system for recording and analyzing off-the-job injuries at the plant.

What have we achieved? Most importantly, a 20% reduction in the total injury rate (cases of disability due to both domestic and industrial injuries) over two years.

Today, the system consists of the following elements:

1. Collection and analysis of data on off-the-job injuries
2. Employee training and information
3. Personnel motivation

Data collection and analysis are built on an automated information gathering system. Like all employers, we receive data about an employee's injury through electronic sick leave certificates with the corresponding code. Based on the received sick leave, the system generates a request to the employee's mobile phone in the form of a link to a questionnaire, where the employee can provide information about the injury (date, type of injury, brief circumstances, and, if desired, attach a photo). If the employee does not respond to the questionnaire within three days (which happens, as this is an opportunity rather than an obligation to report the injury), the task is redirected to the manager of the shop where they work. The manager then determines what happened to the employee and fills out the questionnaire with basic data. An electronic registry is formed from the submitted questionnaires.

Periodic analysis is conducted based on the information about off-the-job injuries: weekly, shop managers report on injuries sustained by their employees during conference calls on industrial safety; monthly, the HSE Director reports as part of a presentation at the plant-wide management meeting.

Based on the results of the analysis, the following types of training and information are implemented:

• within the department, the shop manager conducts discussions about the injuries that occurred and, together with the staff, develops and implements measures for their prevention;
• at the corporate level, the HSE Directorate identifies recurring off-the-job injuries and their dependence on external factors (e.g., weather conditions). In collaboration with the communications department, they develop information posters and slides displayed to employees via social networks, the corporate portal, and on-site screens.

Personnel motivation is built on the implementation of KPIs for the total injury rate (cases of disability due to both domestic and industrial injuries) within the department at the end of the year for shop managers, senior management (GD-1, GD-2 levels), and the CEO.

The system reduces the incentive for personnel to hide information about industrial accidents, as reclassifying an injury as domestic does not improve performance indicators. Consequently, we are able to develop and implement measures to prevent real injuries and avoid their recurrence.

Honest dialogue with employees is the foundation for the successful functioning of an HSE management system at an enterprise!