In connection with World Day for Safety and Health at Work, Eiffage Energía wishes to convey its sensitivity in this matter, which is one of the main pillars of the Strategic Plan 2020 of the Energy Branch of the Eiffage Group, where safety is the top priority.
Within the framework of this Strategic Plan, Eiffage has a letter of commitment that represents a true guide to continuous improvements on prevention matters, from the Company management, which must be applied. For the Eiffage Group, the first duty of a manager and a supervisor is to preserve the physical integrity and health of their employees.
In this respect, the company is developing several awareness-raising actions aimed at achieving excellence in safety, which has achieved between 2010 and 2016 a reduction of more than 80% in the number of workplace accidents, as emphasized recently by Eiffage Energía’s CEO, José Manuel Martínez, in Eiffage Énergia’s internal magazine, Contact.
Thus, the Eiffage Group has distributed, among its more than 500 subsidiaries around the world, a video that narrates different situations concerning workplace accidents. In the video, a 23-year-old employee of the Group relates what happened in the accident, in which he was very close to losing his life, in order to make all workers aware of the importance of complying with all safety rules necessary to avoid a workplace accident.
Training and monitoring of anomalies, incidents and accident rates
Training is essential to combat workplace accidents. This year, the workers will be trained to be aware of the importance of the balance between risk and action at the time of making a decision, since the origin of a large number of accidents at work is due to the confidence created by daily routines.
Furthermore, a pilot test has just been started, recording a full working day of a worker with a fixed camera, making the work area visible in order to correct errors and learn from them, from a safety point of view.
Specific actions are also being carried out with Eiffage Energía’s site managers, who will be eligible for the Awards for Excellence, along with the subsidiaries, who until now did not take part.
These awards, created last year, serve to recognise and reward the work safety effort of both the worker and their entire team.
In addition, every two months, meetings are held with the prevention technicians to follow up the accident rate and the various implemented and future improvement actions.
Every week, since 2016, Eiffage Energía has internally informed all employees of the company’s follow-up and evolution of the company’s accident rate: accidents with casualties, accidents without casualties, incidents and anomalies collected in the more than 5,000 safety inspections carried out annually .
With the aim of achieving a Frequency Index (the number of work accidents registered per million hours worked) of 6 in 2020, other measures will be implemented, such as that each worker will be subjected to a written risk assessment before starting work.
In addition, as emphasized by José Manuel Martínez in the magazine Contact, the communication plan includes a counter of days without accidents and, in all the meetings, priority is given to occupational safety. In this way, good practices and innovations in this field will be shared and non-compliance will be subject to sanctions.
The objective of 2017 is the qualitative improvement of all the audits of the company related to safety and prevention. Since 2012, the Eiffage Energía Group has the certification OHSAS 18001: 2007, for management system of occupational risks prevention.
In addition, this year, the development of two new information campaigns aimed at raising awareness about the importance of occupational safety, is planned.