Mercer’s 9 Life-saving Golden Rules for Workplace Safety

Many companies create rules, policies and manuals to establish workplace safety within the organization. Others try to hold employees to workplace safety rules with disciplinary action or offer incentives to change behaviours. This may bring about change in employees, but usually only in the short term. 

But if discipline and incentives don’t work, how does an employer ensure that employees follow the rules that have been created and implemented for their safety?

There are no shortcuts

Is it easy to make a workplace safe? No. It takes time, attention, planning, implementation and perseverance. There is no shortcut. 

At Mercer, we closely involve each of our employees, including apprentices, in workplace safety. As part of Mercer’s global workplace safety program, “Road to Zero,” they have been able to play an active role in shaping this issue for several years. 

Together with them, we find out on site what works and what does not. Our employees have the experience and knowledge to prevent safety incidents. This allows us to invest in targeted improvements that are accepted by everyone and are effective. This is part of Mercer International’s global safety culture: we motivate our employees to integrate safety into their daily work. Mercer encourages and promotes critical communication about safety and the intentional sharing of experiences and thoughts about safety, across the company and Mercer-wide, as part of the Road to Zero program. These conversations lead to sustainable prevention efforts. 

We are also helped in this by Mercer’s 9 Life-saving Golden Rules for workplace safety.

Mercer’s 9 Life-saving Golden Rules for Workplace Safety

Mercer wants to protect its employees from serious hazards and injuries – every employee, every day, on every shift. Because workplace safety is more than just wearing the right personal protective equipment, the global team known as the Senior Safety Leadership Committee (SSLC) has established basic rules that apply to every single employee, regardless of position or work area: Nine Life-Saving Golden Rules for Occupational Safety. 

All safety rules in our company are important, but these are particularly significant because failure to observe them can endanger lives. Here, our principle is: No one at Mercer demands or tolerates a violation of a Golden Rule!

Throughout 2021, we’re helping our employees better understand the nine rules by sharing stories from the plants about how we’re implementing them – taking the time to make sure everyone is aware of what they mean to us and why they’re important. We want to spark conversations that help us implement the rules in our daily workflows. So stay with us as we take a journey where we will share one LSGR per month – a story of importance – as we all become a little bit safer in our work and personal lives.