Safety at work

Safety is about people

Facts and figures are important for measuring safety and driving progress. But they don’t tell the full story.

We believe every single employee and individual we work with should have the right to be able to live and work free from the risk of injuries and accidents.

We have a responsibility to our 148,000 direct employees, to our contractors and suppliers, and to our local communities around the world.

Safety: a human right at the heart of our business

Health and safety is one of our eight salient human rights issues and we commit to providing a safe and healthy work environment for all employees as part of our Code of Business Principles (PDF 8.99 MB) . Our Code Policy on Occupational Health and Safety spells out what all employees must – and must not – do to ‘live the Code’. We publish Our Code of Business Principles externally and expect all others who work with us to set themselves equally high principles.

Our work with suppliers to improve safety standards can be found in our Human Rights reports and Human rights in our value chain – and in our own operations, we aim for Zero Harm, which underpins everything we do as a business.

If an employee is in breach of our safety standards or procedures, cases are dealt with fairly and objectively. Our countries have consequence management policies. These are in line with local legislation and frameworks. We can take a range of disciplinary actions against those responsible for poor safety oversight – including dismissal in the most serious cases.

We’ve stepped up our enforcement of these policies. We want to make sure leaders understand their accountability when serious incidents happen because our policies and standards have not been implemented.

Our safety performance in 2021

We report safety data from 1 October to 30 September annually. Our key metric is Total Recordable Frequency Rate (TRFR) which measures the number of recordable accidents per million hours worked. Our TRFR ending 30 September 2021 improved to 0.55 accidents per million hours worked, from 0.63 (including recently acquired decentralised businesses) in 2020. This was partly related to fewer accidents at Unilever offices due to continued working from home.

Sadly however, fatalities rose. In the reporting period, three contractors and four employees lost their lives. Two contractors were fatally electrocuted at one of our sites in Pakistan in one event; and a contractor in Hungary lost their life in a construction incident. Two employees were struck by lightning in separate incidents in Kenya and Tanzania. And two employees were involved in a fatal car accident in India.

When fatalities occur, our first priority is to support the emotional and physical needs of the families and team members of the individuals involved, whilst working with local law enforcement, communities and regulators to fully investigate the root cause and determine further preventative measures that can be applied.

Making the roads safer for us and others

Travel continues to be a high-risk activity, affecting Unilever employees, third-party suppliers and members of the public. The recently accelerated trend to eCommerce means that there are more vehicles on the road and more two-wheelers to complete the final mile. Travel safety risk is trending upwards.

In 2019, we introduced guidance on Safe Travel with Carriers, with minimum safety and security requirements for implementation. We worked with each of our carriers to negotiate these requirements into contract renewals.

One of the key requirements in the Safe Travel Standard is the requirement for telematic devices in vehicles of all high-risk employee drivers. Such devices can be used in a number of ways such as providing GPS, traffic or weather updates, to monitoring and recording driving behaviours in real-time.

In 2021, we launched an updated Unilever Safe Travel Standard to include three additional requirements:

• Improved governance on driving hours and driving logs
• Vehicle inspections before driving
• Random drug and alcohol testing for routine drivers

In 2022 we will focus on improved governance of driving behaviours based on the data generated, while protecting data privacy.

While compliance with our current standards will improve road-related fatalities, there are still significant road-related hazards in the countries in which we operate, of which 27 are considered high road risk. New partnerships are required, cross-company and with governments, to improve vehicles (including driverless vehicles), road infrastructures and driver capabilities.

Construction and contractor safety

Just as we are focussed on providing a safer place to work for our employees, we are equally committed to providing safer environments for our contracting partners.

Over the last five years, we have strengthened the Construction Safety Program with initiatives including Construction Safety Standards improvements, Capability Building Workshops, and the deployment of Global Construction Safety Tools. In 2021, we launched the Construction Safety Technical Authority program and while still in its infancy, we have certified Technical Authorities strategically situated to support high-risk work.

How we’re tackling process safety

In 2016, we put together The Process Safety Steering Committee (PSSC), sponsored by the Chief Supply Chain Officer. The PSSC is represented by Senior leaders from each Unilever cluster, and from technical experts from our Engineering and Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) to drive the process safety governance and strategy for the business.

Unilever’s key global internal safety standards and third-party PSM (Process Safety Management) audit framework were endorsed by the committee. And, issue-specific standards are in place to support the global standards i.e. hazard-specific standards for individual sites.

In the five-year period since the start of the Committee, Process Safety has continuously improved with a 32% yearly reduction in third-party severe audit risk findings and 37% reduction in Category 1, 2 and 3 incidents since 2019.

Accountable, responsible, visible – leadership from the top

Our commitment to safety comes from the most senior levels in our organisation. Ultimately, our Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE) is responsible for safety.

Our Chief Business Operations Officer, Reginaldo Ecclissato, is a member of the ULE. He makes sure that safety is championed as a regular part of the ULE agenda.

Our Board’s Corporate Responsibility Committee (CRC) also prioritises safety. It reviews our safety progress scorecard at each meeting, tracks our Covid-19 protocols and actions, and engages regularly with our safety leaders. This strengthens our safety culture across the organisation.

Helping our leaders ‘walk the talk’

Our Licence to Lead training programme helps to embed our safety culture for all Unilever leaders who manage a team. Market leaders use our interactive behaviour-based safety programme to engage with safety.

We’ve developed a robust integration process for our newly acquired businesses across the world. When we acquire a business, we need to make sure that its leaders are aligned with our safety principles as a vital part of integrating them into Unilever.

The Safety Moment programme is used by all leaders throughout the business to reinforce safety principles and demonstrate leaders walking the talk. Safety Moments can take many forms within our business, from Unilever-wide pledges to small reflection groups, where employees can reflect and remind each other about safety processes in the workplace.

Improving safety through behaviour change

Our standards, programmes and technology all help to increase people’s safety. However, behaviour is another important factor. To improve the behaviours, our previous World Class Manufacturing (WCM) programme, which was based on constant improvements in manufacturing, has been redesigned as the Unilever Manufacturing System.

Recognising safety best practice

Our annual Global Safety Awards celebrate the outstanding work of our teams around the world to build a positive safety culture. The awards cover six categories, including safety in our factories, logistics, offices and other centres, as well as construction site safety, process safety and safe travel in vehicles.

Our 2021 winner was our Parque Logistico Norte (PLN) Distribution Centre in Argentina - the largest warehouse in our distribution network in Argentina, moving around 240,000 cases per day, six days a week.

The site sustained a 12-year record with no recordable incidents due to investments in new safety-focused technology, tailored training based on risks, and communications campaigns and engagements that aim to empower a safety-first mindset across the site team.

Training for everyone, no matter what their role

In 2021, we launched our new SHE Learning Portal SHEnet, as the one-stop shop for all online and on-demand SHE training. It’s a place to develop skills and complete certifications. There’s a full training catalogue on SHE learning, key contacts, licenses and much more.

Our safety training is based on clear policies and standards. We have a portfolio of over 100 e-learning modules, which cater to different target groups.

For factory employees, safety training starts before they even begin their job. Our behaviour-based programme is designed to build knowledge and ensure that all employees are committed to helping achieve Vision Zero.

Our safety framework is based on our Health and Safety Policy and a wide range of Mandatory Standards that align with the international standard OHSAS 18001. These guide our management systems, supported by best practice guidance that address individual aspects of health and safety. All standards and guidelines are available to all through our intranet.

Our safety performance in detail

We know that some stakeholders appreciate more in-depth disclosure on our safety performance. Below we provide progress against our preferred accident rate indicator for reporting TRFR since 2010. Going forward, we will also be monitoring a combined TRFR metric for employees and contractors together.

The TRFR measures the number of occupational accidents per one million hours worked and includes all workplace accidents, excluding only those that require simple first-aid treatment.

The main types of incidents that occur in our manufacturing sites are slips/trips/falls and injuries to hands and arms. In non-manufacturing sites, slips/trips/falls are also the most common type of incident, along with travel related injuries mainly linked to road accidents.

Accident rates

Notes

In 2013, we adjusted our reporting period from 1 January to 31 December to 1 October to 30 September. PwC has assured our TRFR from 2014 onwards. Since 2019, we have included new acquisitions that operate as decentralised business units in our TRFR; had we included these in 2017 and 2018, our reported TRFR would have been approximately 6% higher in each year.

TRFR is one of two occupational safety performance indicators that has been independently assured by PwC (the other is the number of fatal accidents).

TRFR is calculated as the sum of all lost‐time accidents (LTA) plus restricted work cases (RWC) plus medical treatment cases (MTC) expressed as a rate per million hours worked.

In line with industry best practice, we include in our definition of an ‘employee’, temporary staff and contractors who work under our direct supervision and we capture TRFR for all Unilever manufacturing and non-manufacturing sites (offices, research laboratories).

In 2021, the total hours worked equalled 341,718,207.

Fatal accidents

Notes

In 2013, we adjusted our reporting period from 1 January to 31 December to 1 October to 30 September.

Fatalities is one of two occupational safety performance indicators that has been independently assured by PwC. The other indicator is TRFR.

Lost-Time Injury Frequency Rate

Alongside tracking accidents, it’s vital we understand the frequency and nature of the injuries these accidents can cause. Our internal reporting system helps us collect more granular data on our Lost-Time Injuries Frequency Rate (LTIFR).

LTIFR measures injuries per million hours worked (from 1 October to 30 September). It counts all ‘lost-time’ safety injuries, i.e. injuries that keep people away from work even for one day.

We measure LTIFR for all our direct employees. For the purposes of reporting, we also include contractors under our direct supervision within our direct employee numbers (these are typically the contractors who work on our production lines). We improved LTIFR to 0.28 injuries per million hours worked in 2021.

We also report the contractors who do not work under our direct supervision (who typically provide project or business support). We’ve been using our internal system to help improve safety for these contractors, maintaining 0.43 in 2021 (in line with 2020), a 55% reduction since 2014.

Occupational Illness Frequency Rate

Our occupational health programmes cover the prevention of work-related illness and occupational diseases, ergonomics, environmental health and protection from noise and enzymes. See Employee wellbeing for more information.

We track occupational illnesses for our employees under the criteria laid down by the US Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA).

Using the Occupational Illness Frequency Rate (OIFR), we measure the number of work-related ill health cases per million hours worked for all our direct employees (from 1 January to 31 December each year). We do not yet measure this for contractors or the temporary staff we call ‘contingent labour’.

Since 2017, we have seen a steady decline in our OIFR, which now stands at 0.13 per million hours worked, the lowest level since we started reporting.