Health & Safety
ICL is pursuing top-tier safety performance as a global organization and by all its sites and BU’s, in comparison to respective peer industries. To achieve this, ICL continually strives to improve the safety culture and behavior of its workforce, by taking proactive action, managing and reducing risks.
Industrial production in general, and specifically in the chemicals industry, requires taking special precautionary measures to maintain a safe and healthy work environment. Some of our products, raw materials and production processes represent a high risk to anyone who deviates from required professional safety standards or from the mandatory means of safety.
Ensuring that our operations, products and distribution systems are safe and secure for employees and our site contractors as well as guests, distributors, suppliers and the communities in which our facilities are located, is part of our ‘Environment, Safety, Health and Security’ policy.
During the current global COVID-19 outbreak, ICL Management is closely following the situation and has established a designated task force which is in continuous direct contact with our teams across the globe, making sure all required safety measures are in place. Action taken included the provision of all required protective equipment (such as face masks and sanitizers) to all global locations, postponing business flights and communicating precaution instructions to all our employees.
ICL requires and provides the use of safety equipment, for all production employees in general and customized for specific roles and work environments.
ICL has adopted occupational health and safety management systems beyond regulatory requirements in 93% of its production sites. These safety management systems are either OHSAS 18001/RC14001 certified or to equivalent management systems. The certified sites include approximately 98% of our production sites workforce, and 85% of our total global workforce (based on data used in indicator 102-8). Sites that do not have industrial production processes, such as office buildings, do not have safety management systems beyond what is required by law. That includes approximately 14% of our employees.
Despite ICL’s continued efforts to reduce work accidents at its sites, in September 2019 a fatal accident occurred involving a contractor worker at ICL China Shanghai Tari (STI). The worker was electrocuted during repair work for a solar-power water heater. The accident was investigated by both the company and the authorities. Results indicated that electricity systems’ management and maintenance rules weren’t followed and aligned with ICL’s operating rules and procedures, which allowed for human error and override of existing protection measures. In immediate response to this event, all electricity system malfunctions were repaired and enhanced electricity isolation systems were installed.
For violation of the local safe production law, the site was fined by 386 K RMB (=~55K USD). The site was also required by law (and by the company’s management, in accordance to with its safety standards) to undertake further corrective actions, including enhanced safety training of relevant personnel (including emphasis on safe maintenance procedures); taking both proactive measures and preparing emergency reaction measures for safe production; and enhanced hazard recognition and prevention practices. The site has completed all these required actions.
Reactive Safety KPI's
| 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rate of work accidents (IR Rate) | 0.69 | 0.73 | 0.82 | 0.73 | 0.49 |
| Rate of lost work days (SI Rate) | 23.5 | 22.5 | 25.6 | 28.6 | 19.7 |
In 2019, ICL recorded 76 non-fatal work accidents (VS 118 such accidents in 2018), of which 50 involved ICL employees and 26 involved contract workers.
A non-fatal work accident is defined by causing at least one-day of absence following the accident. During 2019, company employees total working hours were approximately 20.4 million. Calculations of both IR and SI rates are conducted based on a 200,000 factor (multiplied by total company employee lost workday cases and absent days, respectively). Due to data availability constraints, Both IR and SI rates are for company employees only. However, safety performance for contractors is tracked and monitored regularly for all our sites.
The ICL Global IR rate was reduced by 33% in 2019 compared to 2018, due to the mentioned significant decrease in non-fatal work accidents. Moreover, company employees absent days also significantly decreased, resulting in a 31% decrease in the SI rate. The SI (Severity Index) general methodology is based on an assumption that the number of absence days is correlated with the severity of the safety event.
The total accidents number was successfully decreased by 36% between 2018 and 2019, for both company employees (-34%) and contractor employees (-39%).
ICL considers the significant improvement in safety KPIs in 2019 to be a result of its enhanced safety practices and proactive culture, undertaken that year. These included implementing ICL’s 5 safety principles, conducting wide-scale process risk assessments (PSAs), implementing contractor safety audits (see below), and other improvements.
To assure ICL’s progress continued progress towards its safety goals, the company has set target of further reducing IR global rate by 10% in 2020, compared with the previous year. This reactive goal has been broken down to the different business units and the KPIs are tracked by each of them and have been set as personal goals for site managers and EHS managers.
Enhancing Safe Contractor Work
ICL takes responsibility for its contractors and business partners, as part of the company’s vision to establish a leading position in safety practices. ICL is acting to ensure that its contractors are involved in proactive safety management, and have the right skills and knowledge to perform their work in a safe way. Since 2018, the company continuously performs contractor safety evaluations, in order to identify weaknesses and where safety enhancement efforts would be most effective. The evaluated contractors were checked and ranked on specific safety categories such as:
- Number and severity of accidents;
- Whether accidents/hazards are reported to all relevantroles;
- Proper usage of safety equipment;
- Safe condition of vehicles and tools used in operations;
- Are safety regulations and instructions maintained;
- Is the work area properly organized;
- Were site-specific safety surveys conducted pre-commencement of work;
After the evaluation, contractors who excel receive a recognition certificate. Moreover, the company works on improvements with the evaluated contractors on any identified gaps. ICL aims to continue and increase its engagement with its contractors, to ensure their safe work.
Employee Health
ICL manages its occupational health & industrial hygiene to recognize, evaluate, and minimize employees’ exposure to occupational health hazards. As a chemical industry company, ICL must manage and reduce the risk of potential hazardous exposure to materials, processes, production and mining.
Read MoreGlobal ICL Safety Week 2019
In November 2019, ICL held its third annual “Global Safety Week”. Thousands of ICL employees participated in a full week of awareness activities, conducted simultaneously at various ICL locations in Israel, U.S.A, Europe, Brazil and China. The main goal of this annual event is to increase pro-active behavior by employees and managers to reduce and prevent accidents and to emphasize that safety is everyone's responsibility.
Each of the ICL production sites engaged in activities designed to increase safety in their specific production processes. These included site-specific scenario training, technical instruction and accident assessments. Other activities were held in ICL offices as well. These included safe driving training and car-accident simulators, home safety training, lectures and drills on earthquake scenarios, office ergonomics workshops and even lectures on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In addition, several videos were communicated globally where ICL employees who were unfortunately previously injured in work accidents shared their personal experiences. These videos were communicated to emphasize the great importance and relevance of safety to each and every employee.
ICL intends to continue this tradition of the Global Safety week in the future, as an important part of the company’s commitment to constantly raise awareness among its employees and maintain their health and safety.
