Health & Safety

Health & Safety

  1. Home
  2. People
  3. Health & Safety

Our Road to Zero

Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our people. We recognize the rights of all workers related to health and safety in the workplace, along with acknowledging the responsibilities that come with those rights. This core value is entrenched into everything we do. Safe production is our goal.

The Road to Zero is our journey toward zero injuries. Our safety program is a CEO-led framework of prevention elements, standards, evolving initiatives, engagement opportunities, and education that gives our team members the skills and support they need to eliminate workplace injuries. We believe that all injuries are preventable. 

On this journey we promote near-miss reporting, taking every event seriously. We examine the factors and search for root causes to apply learnings locally and even across the whole organization. We are advancing our program in several ways with a focus on both behavioural and process safety aspects. Our intention is to advance our culture further toward the interdependent phase of the Bradley Curve.

  • Total Recordable Incident Rate

    While we achieved a record-low recordable incident rate in 2019, we have a long way to go. Our incident rate across all of our operations was 2.8 incidents per 100 full-time workers, a metric in our industry that is generally referred to as the Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR). This record is not world-class nor is it zero, but it is improving. We are confident we will meet our aspirational goal to have a TRIR below 1 by 2030. 

    We also measure leading key performance indicators such as compliance to inspection targets, training, and safety meeting attendance. It is these activities that, when done right, will lead us to the TRIR we are looking for.

    Mercer Strategy

Leading by Example

Our Leadership Committee meets regularly, reviewing performance, sharing best practices, and learning from incidents. They are committed to continual learning and take the time to explore new concepts, equipment, and technology to better support health and safety through the organization. The committee participates in Safety Day visits to the operations, interacting with local safety teams, workers, and supervisors in their work environments.

We are committed to a “zero harm” environment where safety needs to be and is our overriding priority in everything we do, at work and at home, because all injuries can be prevented.

  • Health & Safety Dialogue

    While we have implemented many formal strategies to support our health and safety performance, the most successful strategy has been building an environment that fosters open and transparent dialogue.  

    At Mercer, we believe in every worker’s right to participate. A safe workplace is a workplace that engages in safety conversations – and we talk about safety a lot. We talk about safety with all team members at our daily “tool-box talks.” We talk about safety during our regular safety tours with our management teams. We talk about safety in our daily safety messages and newsletters. We talk about safety before commencing any meeting at our company and we talk about safety whenever we review our hundreds of suggestions or “near misses” from our operations and others in the industry.

    Careers at Mercer

Proactive Safety and Prevention

At Mercer, we have developed tools to identify hazards and apply controls to mitigate risk to as low as reasonably achievable. We understand all hazards cannot be eliminated from many of our workplaces but we can ensure that our people are aware of their workplace hazards and how to protect themselves from those hazards. We apply the hierarchy of control principle, striving to eliminate and substitute whenever possible and apply engineering and administrative controls when required. We use PPE as our last line of defence. 

Prevention activities are a regular part of daily work and the key to delivering results. Leadership presence that engages with the people most at risk, active collaboration, and respecting the obligation to refuse unsafe work are all critical for our success. 

We support our operations through safety professionals acting as mentors, coaches, and subject matter experts to line management and the individuals who hold the most critical responsibility for health and safety prevention.

Our Values

Top