Corporate workplace safety policies are the responsibility of the Environment Health and Safety (EHS) department, working in close partnership with the corporate and local Human Resource departments. In this regard, measures and investments continue to be implemented to improve working conditions. In addition, the Viscofan Group works to obtain reliable and consistent indicators to measure and compare performance in the various countries in which the Group operates, in this way extending best health and safety practices to its production centres.

Viscofan considers that accidents may be prevented, and that is why not only does the Group work to have safer facilities but to make all staff aware of the importance of attitude in relation to safety. For Viscofan, the material aspects that affect safety are essentially based on the characteristics of the position and the activities that are required..

Viscofan still makes huge efforts to standardize its procedures while also communicating its policies throughout the companies using specific courses and informational materials, available to employees at their areas of work.

In order to carry out these initiatives, the Group has the EHS policy, approved by the Board of Directors, pointing out the following relevant guidelines with regard to workplace safety:

• Provide employees with a safe and healthy workplace.
• Identify and comply with applicable legislation and regulation in terms of Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) in each of the locations where the Group does business, and any other voluntarily-acquired commitments of Viscofan to improve these areas.
• Ensure that management, employees and all staff working for the organisation (or on its behalf) are aware of this policy and are trained, according to their responsibilities, to comply with it.

Alongside this, certain specifications are determined within the collective bargaining agreements of the different locations in which the Viscofan Group is present in matters related to health and safety. 

In 2019, a worker died in an occupational accident at the Cáseda facility in Spain. This is the first fatal accident in the history of the plant. An investigation into the causes of the accident has been carried out and a report has been generated with proposals for improvements and recommendations on which work is ongoing. As a result of this accident, the safety protocols have been reviewed and the facilities have been checked.

The indicator of hours lost due to accident or illness of own staff has been re-linked to management's variable remuneration, and a reduction in the severity of accidents at work has also been set as an objective within the long-term variable remuneration plan for Viscofan's senior management and key personnel, reflecting the number of hours lost due to accidents among the total number of hours worked.   

The performance of the health and safety indicators of the Viscofan Group is as follows:

Training in accident prevention and about the importance of safe behaviour patterns is one of the cornerstones of health protection of our employees. This training includes basic prevention measures that have to be adopted in the workplace, or the importance of day-to-day heart-healthy habits, the role of middle-level management and the improvement of its leadership in safety. 

Notable improvements in the area of occupational health and safety include: improvement of the machines in Montgomery, US fire-fighting facilities in Weinheim, Germany, Zacapu and San Luis Potosi Mexico, and ergonomic adaptations in the new plant 4 in Caseda, Spain.

 At the same time, inclusion of the OHSAS 18001 certification in all the production plants is one of the objectives to be achieved in the "MORE TO BE 2016-2020" period. It is an internationally accepted specification that defines the requirements for the establishment, implementation and operation of an effective Occupational Health and Safety Management System. ISO 45001 is the new safety standard that replaces OHSAS and in Viscofan we already have some plants certified according to this new regulation: Cáseda and Urdiain (Spain), Hasselt (Belgium) and Kentland (USA). Currently, the rest of the plants are in the process of migrating to the new certification, a process that will culminate in the first months of 2021.

The breakdown of the Group's plants that now have these certificates is the following: