” A healthy and competitive work environment Staying healthy Safety in the workplace is also about maintaining health. AAK is present in many countries with very different cultures, varying degrees of health awareness and different health initiatives by local or national authorities. For this reason, there is no uniform approach to maintaining health, activities are instead guided by local decision-making, based on a needs assessment. Most initiatives focus on employees. Examples of AAK’s health initiatives and offers include: First aid and safety training Widespread protective equipment Computer glasses Health checks and vaccinations Access to sports facilities Company sporting events Healthy food offers For employees in West Africa, AAK offers include free mosquito nets, annual information on risk control, vaccination against yellow fever, meningitis and cholera, and health insurance – again based on a local needs assessment. AAK Mexico also operates health facilities and offers consultation for employees’ family members and the local community as a whole. What are the most important reasons for the improvements in AAK’s health and safety performance over the last year? The biggest contributor to the improvements of the AAK safety record was the concerted efforts of the entire Global Safety Management Team. The global team has been in place since its creation in 2013 and the results have shown. By sharing procedures, trending near misses and incidents through KPIs and monthly meetings, we saw where the focus of our efforts were required. These factors improved our overall programs in all facilities. The interaction of the various safety professionals was instrumental in identifying hazards, eliminating risks and strengthening the programs at all sites. The resulting integration of site practices allowed the overall team to advance the culture of safety in all activities including a global team work approach that allowed AAK to achieve world class safety numbers in 2014, reducing the Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR) by more than 50 percent below our stated goal. This number includes eight facilities with no lost time incidents and four sites that were incident free for the entire year. AAK is a large and diverse company with many different job functions. How do you ensure that all employees work according to the same values and towards the same goals? A healthy and competitive work environment is about ensuring clear direction, alignment and commitment. At AAK we ensure direction by communicating our strategy throughout the organization. This is done by using different internal communication channels such as our intranet, newsletters, monthly management calls and town hall meetings. However, we consider our managers and their daily conversations with employees and our different teams to be our most important communication channel. These conversations about turning our goals into actions, create an understanding and a commitment to our goals and values, which in turn move our business forward. In addition, AAK’s strategy is broken down into specific goals for units, teams and each individual, and performance and behavior is evaluated and discussed on a structured basis in a yearly Personal Development Plan (PDP) and a mid-year review. It is our experience that information sharing, a high level of involvement and ongoing feedback and coaching on behavior creates commitment and accountability. What is AAK’s strategy for talent development within the company? Our ability to innovate and co-develop is crucial to us. That takes talent. The last couple of years we have identified a number of capability gaps and this has given us a better understanding of our future needs within functional and leadership development. In addition, each employee has a development plan which is formulated in a yearly PDP. Development takes place through international assignments, job-rotation, feedback, coaching and functional and leadership training. Carla Leilani Packness Vice President HR & Communications 40
AAK - Sustainability Report 2014/2015
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