Shaping a culture of safety
Accelerating the circular transition has to be done in a safe way. At Ragn-Sells, we are committed to creating a culture of workplace safety by raising risk awareness, encouraging incident reporting, and building trust. Two tragic events in 2023 reminded us that we still have work to do.
21 May 2024Safety first is a key principle that permeates every aspect of our business. To achieve our goal of becoming the industry leader in workplace safety by 2030, we are running a number of group-wide initiatives to shape a strong safety culture. These include the introduction of a new reporting tool, measuring performance
against a wide range of metrics, and arranging the annual Safety Week for all employees.
– Everything we do to promote safety in the workplace helps to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of this issue. We see that our increased focus on safety leads to more incidents being reported, which is an invaluable tool for monitoring our progress and gaining insight into our safety work, says Mikael Hedström, CEO of Ragn-Sells Treatment & Detox Sweden.
Leadership plays a crucial role in our safety work. For employees to feel supported in reporting risks or incidents, our management must promote open communication, mutual trust, and shared participation as a company norm. The insights of our employees are essential in identifying risks and determining preventive or corrective measures.
– While workplace safety is heavily regulated by legislation and is ultimately a management responsibility, shared participation is an integral part of Ragn-Sells’ safety culture. We encour age all our employees to help us identify the issues we need to work on, says Mikael.
In 2023, two fatal accidents occurred in our operations. In the midst of grief and crisis response, the events were a tragic reminder of the importance of proactive and systematic safety management. Both accidents have been thoroughly investigated to understand how they arose and to assess what needs to be done to prevent future accidents.
– These accidents should never have happened. They were a painful reminder that we still have work to do to achieve our goal – a business where no one gets hurt on the job, says Mikael.
As well as protecting the lives and health of current employees, a strong safety culture is also necessary when recruiting new talent.
– Attracting the right people is fundamental to our competitiveness and our contribution to the circular economy. That is why we want to be the industry leader not only in circular innovation, but also in workplace safety, says Mikael Hedström.
