The Safety Excellence System

[Audio] Welcome to the safety excellence for leaders course. The audience for this course is our plant leadership and above. If you're a GM, PM, area operations leader or business operations leader this course is for you. If you're not currently in one of these roles, you're welcome to stick around as you may learn something too..

[Audio] During this presentation we will provide a brief overview of the safety excellence system or the SES. An overview and look at the structure, followed by a brief review on some key policies and finally a look into the standards themselves and what your obligations are as a leader and what to expect with commitment and resources..

[Audio] Welcome and thank you for viewing this presentation. We did our best to keep this short and sweet as we know we ask a lot of our leaders and time is one of most scarce resources. The following slides are meant to be a small peak into the safety excellence system. It is far from exhaustive, and we have one ask before we start. Keep a paper and pen handy and jot down notes as you proceed through the presentation. When you're done, please review those notes and form a commitment to addressing any gaps you currently see. Even if you find no gaps or you didn't take any notes, schedule some time with your local safety leader or if you're a business or regional leader, maybe ask to attend one of your regional safety calls. Spend this time to verify your commitment to safety with your safety leader or leaders. Ask them where you can support more. Are there plant goals that are conflicting with safety? What is working well and needs to continue?.

[Audio] The Safety Excellence System provide the framework of the health and safety management and defines commitment to compliance, the health and safety of our team members and continuous improvement. The Safety Excellence System is designed to meet an evolving and dynamic business and operating model and follows the guidelines and principles outlined in recognized external management system standards ISO 14001 and ANSI Z10. Every year we evaluate the SES and use our performance and discussions with leaders like you to shape our next fiscal year strategy. You are probably already familiar with the logo on the screen and our strategy which is broken down into four categories which we affectionately refer to as our four P's. People, process, prevention and performance. The SES homepage can be found by clicking the link on the page.

[Audio] The purpose of the Global Safety Excellence Policies is to describe the health and safety management system which is called the Safety Excellence System. In these Global Safety Excellence SES Policies, also called the Global SES Policies, the high-level expectations for the corporate health and safety department, business leadership and manufacturing facilities are described as well as directing towards the applicability of standards, implementation tools and software systems. The Global SES Policies apply to all WestRock sites, business units and operations worldwide, including joint ventures, partnerships and other business arrangements where WestRock holds a majority ownership interest or majority voting control, as well as sites where WestRock has agreed by contract to manage a business. This includes manufacturing sites, sales and design centers and other non-manufacturing sites where WestRock team members are present. The Safety Excellence System has several layers of interrelated documentation (1) The WestRock Health and Safety Policy (2) The Global Safety Excellence (SES) Policies (3) Site Safety Management Standards and Site Technical Performance Standards,(the "Site SES Standards" and (4) Implementation Tools. These layers address the " Why" , the " What" , the " How " and the " With what".

[Audio] In this section we will highlight a few of the policies that influence how successful we are in implementing the SES.

[Audio] Expectations for our Executive Leaders (Executive VPs, Business Unit General Managers, Area VPs and equivalent) Be accountable for overall safety performance of the business Implement the company's safety strategy in the business Develop and implement business-specific health and safety plans and goals Allocate adequate resources to sites for implementation of the SES and related health and safety efforts Support capital and maintenance processes required for health and safety projects Foster a strong health and safety culture within the business Promote the free and open reporting and discussion of safety incidents, illnesses and near misses. Encourage and support the sharing of health and safety lessons learned.

[Audio] Expectations for our Senior Operations Leaders (General Managers, Plant managers and equivalent) Be accountable for the health and safety performance of the area(s) under his/her supervision Actively participate in the site safety team(s) Approve the annual site health and safety plan, goals and related key performance indicators Be visible in the workplace on health and safety matters, including engaging team members in conversations about safety Foster and facilitate team member engagement in health and safety activities Implement processes (risk assessments) to proactively identify and mitigate health and safety risks at the sites under his/her supervision Ensure adequate resources are available for the implementation of health and safety activities required for compliance and to support the SES Verify the site is meeting all applicable health and safety compliance obligations Promote the free and open reporting and discussion of safety events and exposures..

[Audio] Expectations for our Site Safety Coordinator / Manager / Specialist Monitor health and safety risks and hazards in the workplace Manage processes (risk assessments) to proactively identify and mitigate health and safety risks at the site Conduct safety inspections in the workplace Track safety audit findings to closure Report injuries, illnesses and near misses to the corporate health and safety department and business leaders Train team members on health and safety requirements and the SES Assist the site in complying with applicable health and safety requirements Assist the safety team in implementing and assessment of the SES Assist the safety team in its duties Advise team members on how to minimize exposures (risks and hazards) in the workplace and improve safety performance Share safety lessons learned and encourage a learning culture on safety.

[Audio] What does this all mean? Quite simply, as a leader you are just as responsible, if not more responsible than your site safety leader for the safety of your workforce. Understand that your site safety leader is your subject matter expert. They own the management of the processes. They are required to monitor safety, implement programs, recommend corrective actions and implement the safety strategy. However, your safety leader is not responsible for all of it. He or she needs your support. That's more than just saying you support safety and that we need to do the right thing. It's assigning resources outside of the safety department to assist with corrective actions from audits, closing of concern reports, identifying AND correcting hazards. We will talk more in detail later in this presentation on how resource allocations is vital to a successful health and safety program. Finally, your actions will do the most to demonstrate your commitment. Have you or will you take a shortcut to meet a productivity goal? We need a forklift to move some pallets, but the trained operator is on break. You learn that your warehouse manager gave the ok for someone else to move the pallets who was not trained. How do you react? You learn that there is an important safety standdown to discuss a serious near miss that happened on 3rd shift, but this would require us to stop the press and fall behind. What actions do you take when there are competing interests? The decisions you make every day send a message to your team..

[Audio] One way to show your support is an established safety team. Each WestRock manufacturing site must establish a site safety team or safety pillar team. The safety team must follow a written standard agenda for their meetings. The agenda of the safety team is listed on the slide. It's easy as a leader to ask your safety leader to form a safety team and ask them to meet regularly. However, true safety leadership and support will be to ensure that the safety team is comprised of an appropriate balance of management and team member representatives based on local needs and requirements, including a management representative who has authority to act on the committee's recommendations and provide budgetary resources for the same. As a leader you need to ensure that attendance is required, and that workers are allowed to take time away from the factory floor to attend the meeting and complete follow-up actions. Outside of your safety committee, as a leader you can show engagement by allowing your safety leader time to discuss issues, challenges and wins during scheduled staff meetings. As a leader you can show your commitment to engagement by actively participating in safety GEMBA walks, inspections or meetings to foster an environment where your direct reports understand that safety is a value and priority and not just something we do because corporate westrock says we have to..

[Audio] The next section will cover our safety standards, the third rung of our management system.

[Audio] Our performance standards are the heart of our SES. While our policies govern at a high level our strategy and management of safety at westrock, our standards govern HOW we will do it. Our standards begin with site safety management. As a leader of people in our organization, this is the most critical of our standards for you and your direct reports to understand. Next are our 9 critical standards. These standards are comprised of elements that are most likely to protect against life changing events, fatalities, fires and significant events. They are comprised of machine guarding, lockout tagout, powered industrial trucks, line and equipment opening, electrical safety, fall protection and prevention, confined space entry, hot work and cranes, hoists and slings. Finally, as we mature and work towards continuous improvement, we have begun to add additional elements. Over the last 3 years we have added 2 new elements each year and will likely add several more before we are complete. These elements are Material handling and dock safety, job safety planning, ergonomics, personal protective equipment, contractor safety management, emergency preparedness, pandemic response, flammable liquids and legacy SMS guidance documents. You can access these elements through the hyperlink on the page.

[Audio] Within each element you'll find a host of tools to help you succeed and meet the requirements of the SES. And speaking of the requirements, we'll talk about how we measure success in a bit. But first, take a look at our lockout tagout standard. You'll notice that here you can find the standard itself. As a leader you shouldn't feel the need to memorize every section and word within our standards, but you should verify that your site safety leader and element owners understand the requirements. Element owners? Hold that thought too. As a site leader you DO need to understand that these standards are largely based off OSHA, ANSI, and other country regulations. They are also viewed as the key to safety success. If we are following the requirements in these standards, we not only in compliance with regulations but we are significantly reducing our risk. Please note that we always expect our site to follow the most stringent requirements. If you work in a country that requires more than our SES, you should follow those. Note that some of these requirements are not regulatory requirements in all countries, but still remain westrock requirements as we believe they reduce our risk. Regardless of regulatory requirements. In addition to the standard itself you'll find an implementation tool for each standard. Think of our implementation tools as a manual. Whereas the standard states what we must do or don't do, our implementation tools helps site leaders, element owners and leaders understand HOW to implement these requirements at your site. Here you'll also find site templates. These templates can be used to create your own site-specific standards that conform to the corporate requirements. They are created in a way to make it rather simple to fill in the blanks with your site information and meet the requirements of the westrock standards. Finally, you'll find a suite of templates, forms and tools that can be used to achieve success. But wait, there's more. Linked on the page is also the appropriate training for employees and element owners. A one stop shop to success!.

[Audio] What's the old adage; if you don't measure it, it won't get done. Within our Benchmark Gensuite system we have a tool called our management system scorecard. This tool takes all our standards and distills them down into audit questions. Currently there are over 200 total questions and 15 elements including the security vulnerability assessment (SVA). We require every westrock site to perform a self assessment every year. As a leader you should understand that the completion of the scorecard is a requirement of our strategy. You should also understand that it is not the sole responsibility of the safety leader to complete it, but it is their responsibility to ensure it does get done. As a leader, making it clear to your site leadership team that this is an expectation is crucial to success. So how do you do that? The answer, as we alluded to earlier are our element owners. Of the 15 total elements we expect your site safety leader owns no more than 4. Your results may vary depending on the size of your site and your safety leader will always be your subject matter expert helping your element owners, training them and assisting them, but spreading the love is vital. For example, for most sites the owner of element 1 "Health and Safety Management standard" is typically the general manager or site leader. Often the owner of the PIT standard is someone in logistics, warehousing or material management. And your maintenance leader and his or her staff may own elements like hot work and electrical safety. There are no hard and fast rules. Understand that it's estimated that for a medium sized site, completion of the scorecard should take 40 to 80 total hours. For mills or smaller sites this task could take longer or less. Providing your safety leader and your element owners time to complete these tasks are again, critical to our success. What do the numbers mean? It's quite simple. Each element has a number of questions. The number of yes', no's and n/a's all contribute to an element score and therefore an overall site score. While the scores are important as they can provide us insight to where we're doing well and where we have opportunities, they shouldn't be viewed as the end all be all. These scores should be used to develop strategy and generally the goal of each site every year is to improve your score, not necessarily achieve a certain minimum site score..

[Audio] Earlier we mentioned standard 1 the health and Safety Management standard and how you as a leader should be familiar with this element and potentially even the owner at your site. That's because within this element and its 46 questions are all the expectations for you as the leader. How are you expected to support safety and the SES. What is the expectation around resources, training, legal requirements, incident investigation, communications, audits and hazard recognition. In this presentation we will ask you to complete at a minimum one follow-up activity. We ask that you work with your site safety leader to review element 1. Set aside at least an hour and go through the element. Additionally, we hope this review will prompt you to take a few additional notes on how you can improve your engagement with safety. On your screen you'll see a small snippet of the scorecard for element 1. Keep in mind, the scorecard that we use for self-assessment each year are also the same questions our corporate audit team will use. The first time you're reading these questions and expectations should not be during your corporate audit..

[Audio] Thank you for your time today. We hope this brief overview of the safety excellence system was helpful for you as a leader of people. If this was all repeat news for you then that's great. You're on the right path and please keep doing what you're doing. If some of this is new, please make an effort to address the areas that need it. Finally, one of the main goals of this presentation was to help you as a leader understand that our SES is critical, but it takes a lot of work to do it all and you as leaders need to provide strong leadership and commitment to its success. As a result, we strongly believe that a successful implementation of the SES will improve compliance and reduce risk on our path to one and safety excellence. Thank you..