A year on from the launch of Norbord’s “Accidents – Zero Tolerance” safety initiative at all four of its European mills, the campaign continues to go from strength to strength.

Designed to promote personal responsibility for safety, the initiative encourages every Norbord employee to consider the safety aspects of their daily job functions. To do this, Norbord has developed a new web-based training model, new safety measurement tools and reporting procedures, safety leadership programme courses for managers and carried out company-wide publicity campaigns.

The safety leadership programme provides frontline supervisors with a toolkit to help them coach their teams in the ethos of individual responsibility for personal safety. The plan is that all 40 supervisors from Europe will attend this two-day course at Norbord’s headquarters in Toronto.

Steve Roebuck, Director of Health Safety and Environmental Affairs at Norbord, comments “Our supervisors are now trained in how to coach their teams to make them understand that the responsibility for safety does not just stop at management, but is the responsibility of everyone working at Norbord today”. Steve adds “The Safety Leadership Programme gives our supervisors the training and coaching in skills that we need for future leaders in our company. Although the vehicle is safety, these team coaching skills are equally transferable to other areas of business such as production and quality control”.

Scott McGuiness, MDF Production Manager at Norbord, who attended the two-day course along with his colleagues in Toronto, commented “Overall the Toronto trip was an excellent experience. We learned from each other and shared experiences, and truly appreciate that for Norbord, safety is the number one priority”.

The success of Norbord’s Safety Campaign is illustrated by the results of a recent survey which revealed a high percentage of employees claim to know more about safety than a year ago and, most importantly, have modified their behaviour to act in a safer manner.

Norbord’s investment in the various tools designed to improve safe behaviour habits has been considerable and it plans to make available the safety web site to its customers for use, if they wish, for employee safety training.