Maintaining a safe workplace

Our approach

Amcor’s Code of Conduct and Ethics Policy states: ‘Amcor cares about the safety of its people and recognises that injuries result in needless suffering to individuals and their families. Amcor is committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment for its co-workers, contractors and visitors. This commitment is fully supported by management and extensive safety programs have been developed.’

Amcor’s ultimate goal is ‘No Injuries’. To support this goal Amcor provides education, and on-the-job training appropriate for each country in which we operate and for the activities in which our co-workers are engaged.

Amcor’s Global Occupational Health, Safety and Environment (OHS&E) Steering Committee is responsible for the ongoing development of Amcor’s health and safety programs. The Steering Committee consists of the OHS&E leaders from within each Business Group and Amcor’s Corporate function. It meets at approximately every two months to: develop OHS&E strategy and programs; facilitate knowledge sharing; ensure the consistent application of policies, standards and procedures, and to ensure compliance with standards.

The Amcor safety standards set the mandatory, minimum requirements for all Amcor operations and apply to all co-workers, visitors and contractors at Amcor sites. The Amcor Board requires monthly reports from the Business Groups on compliance with these standards and local legislation, in addition to reports on injury statistics. Internal audits of the management systems are conducted at least annually and external audits are conducted every three years.

Amcor’s strategic safety objectives are to:

– build internal commitment to safety and environmental management, and demonstrate leadership across all levels of the organisation;

– establish and maintain a best practice governance framework;

– build a performance culture of line ownership, co-worker involvement and systems integration; and

– ensure co-workers are trained and engaged to identify and eliminate workplace risks.

These objectives are supported by one, two and five-year targets and all Amcor sites have annual action plans in place to achieve them. These action plans build upon the processes, resourcing and infrastructure already in place.

How we are doing

This year we developed new global standards for safety, environment and security. The standards provide a company-wide best practice approach that defines the minimum performance expectations for each of our sites. The standards provide a risk-based approach to identifying deficiencies and prioritising action. They were developed as a collaborative effort by many Amcor co-workers, reflecting our proud expertise and tireless efforts in these important areas.

The global standards include a renewed focus on environmental performance. Three new environmental standards were developed, covering environmental discharges, community impact and cooling tower management.

A three-day global Safety Conference was held for all Amcor OHS&E directors. Key outcomes of the conference were: collaboration on the new global safety, environment and security standards; sharing examples of best practice performance between our businesses, and the definition of an agreed company safety culture. Culture and changing behaviours are recognised as the greatest challenge and opportunity for Amcor’s future safety performance. We have defined a common set of beliefs upon which to base our organisational decisions.

The new standards and culture definition will form the basis of an OHS&E toolkit, to be rolled out durign the next reporting period. The roll-out and training program shall target business, site level and front line management to ensure that key messages can be effectively and consistently cascaded throughout the organisation.

Amcor’s OH&S auditing program involves annual internal audits and third-party, risk-based audits of each site every three years. This year we commenced a review of the program to standardise the capture, interpretation and reporting of audit information. The revised audit program will be rolled out next year.

Injuries and illnesses

Amcor’s safety performance is measured using two criteria – Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) and Recordable Case Frequency Rate (RCFR). The severity of any Lost Time Injuries is also measured by counting the number of work days missed.

Amcor’s LTIFR is measured by calculating the number of injuries resulting in at least one full work day lost per million hours worked. In 2010/11, the LTIFR was 0.8 compared with the previous financial year’s result of 0.9. This result includes all the former Alcan Packaging sites. The result, when compared with that of the previous year, represents an overall improvement of 11%.

Amcor’s RCFR is measured by calculating the number of medical treatment cases and lost time injuries per million hours worked. In FY2010/11, the RCFR was 4.0 compared with the previous financial year’s result of 4.1. This result includes all of the former Alcan Packaging sites. The result, when compared with that of the previous year, represents an overall improvement of 2.4%.

Safety performance by Amcor Business

The breakdown of safety data by Amcor Business for FY2010/11 (including contractors) is:

Amcor Business	LTIFR	RCFR
Rigid Plastics	0.6	3.3
Australasia	0.9	9.7
Packaging Distribution	0.4	4.1
Flexibles Europe & Americas	1.1	3.1
Tobacco Packaging	0.6	2.2
Flexibles Asia Pacific	0.6	2.9
Corporate	0.4	5.3

Fire safety

During the reporting period, Amcor renewed its focus on fire safety. Whilst Amcor’s emergency response standards and plans are robust, we need to remain vigilant by constantly running drills, exercises and training to ensure we are always ready.

Fines and prosecutions

Amcor did not have any material fines or prosecutions for workplace safety violations in FY2010/11.

TravelSafe and health and wellbeing programs

All Amcor co-workers travelling for business purposes have access to the Amcor TravelSafe program, which offers pre-travel advice, travel tracking and incident response.

Over the reporting period, 17,165 unique international trips were tracked by the TravelSafe program. The program tracks the risk rating of each trip, based on the countries visited. This enables the active management of personal risk to Amcor co-workers travelling on business.

Various health and education programs were made available to Amcor co-workers during FY2010/11. An Employee Assistance Program is available to around 90% of our co-workers, providing free, confidential counselling and services.

In Colombia, Amcor’s Proyecto Vida (Project Life Plan) workshops offer co-workers and their families information about key social and health issues such as healthy lifestyles, growing as a family, family budgeting and family dynamics. Recognising the high rate of poverty in the region, further workshops are also offered to teach employees’ spouses how to start up small businesses to support their family with extra income. We have partnered with government agencies to supply training for the project. Participation in the workshops has been high and employee turnover in the region has reduced significantly since Proyecto Vida started.