Carlsberg Malaysia has set a new company health and safety record of 1,000 consecutive days without lost-time accidents across its operations nationwide, beating the brewer’s previous record of 415 days in 2018.
The achievement highlights the company’s continuous improvements for employee wellbeing and workplace safety to drive a ZERO Accidents Culture, one of four pillars of the Carlsberg Group’s global sustainability strategy named Together Towards ZERO.
Under the ZERO Accidents Culture, the Carlsberg Group aims to achieve year-on-year reductions in accident rates by 2022 with zero lost-time accidents across the Group by 2030. Carlsberg Malaysia’s milestone places it among more than 30 Carlsberg production facilities globally that have achieved 1,000 days without lost-time accidents by 2021, reaffirming the brewer’s commitment towards its zero-accident ambition.
Stefano Clini, Managing Director of Carlsberg Malaysia, commented, “As a company, 1,000 days of zero lost-time accidents is a testament to all our people who have made health and safety the foremost priority not just for themselves, but also for their colleagues and the business partners and contractors we work with. This landmark achievement is but a small reflection of the effort of many people over three years to continually improve on workplace safety and we are aware that it’s just the beginning towards our next milestone of 2,000 days in 2024.”
The brewer defines a lost-time accident as an incident or injury that results in time taken off work for treatment or recovery. Previously, the company’s zero lost-time accident targets were tracked against its supply chain operations only, covering brewing and logistics workplaces where serious accidents were most likely to occur with Carlsberg Malaysia on track to achieve its 1,000-day milestone last year.
In 2020, the brewer went the extra mile to include zero lost-time accidents as a target for employees across all functions and localities including field-based employees in sales and marketing, with the resulting milestone achieved by all Carlsberg Malaysia employees this month. The Group’s Singapore operations, comprising direct employees as well as logistics and warehousing partners, have also recorded zero lost-time accidents within the period.
Peter Wachenschwanz, Supply Chain Director of Carlsberg Malaysia, said, “Our focus on safety begins from our people actively identifying, reporting and acting on near-misses and safety concerns to prevent risks escalating to the point of lost-time accidents or worse, fatalities. Last year alone, we saw 95% of employees submitting more than 3,400 safety concerns in total. We are now on the next phase of our journey to not just identify safety risks, but also to reward positive behaviours through our Best Safety-based Observation system that has had a significant impact on employees’ mindsets and helped us achieve our new 1,000-day record.”
To address road safety among its sales and marketing field staff, Carlsberg Malaysia champions traffic rules and responsible driving by providing high-visibility vests for motorcyclists and hands-free phone holders for employees. The company also installed mandatory dual-camera dash cams in all company vehicles, providing a video record in the event of a traffic accident. The dash cams also serve as a deterrent to irresponsible driving behaviour and drink-driving as drivers must record readings from company-supplied breathalysers via the internal camera each time before operating their vehicles.
As a result, the brewer saw a gradual decline in traffic accidents involving field-based employees to 10 cases in the first nine months of this year, compared to 15 in 2020 and 28 in 2019.
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, health and safety priorities have expanded to include active measures to prevent infections among employees since national lockdowns began in March 2020, including social distancing at work, alternate teams arrangements, flexible working hours, controlled people movements and restricted shift handovers on site, as well as bi-weekly COVID-19 swab tests with more than 7,000 tests carried out to date.
The brewer also fully sponsored vaccinations for 600 employees and third-party vendors under the Selangor Vaccine Programme (SelVax) with 100% of its brewery workforce fully vaccinated in July.
Clini concluded, “Health and safety have always been our top priorities and we have robust processes in place to not only safeguard product and workplace integrity, but also uphold the wellbeing of our people. We are proud to share that our commitment to lead with care by placing our employees’ welfare first without compromising on productivity has resulted in zero infection clusters at our brewery since the pandemic began in March 2020.”