Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness
Rural development
Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
Occupational health and safety G4-DMA
Safety by design and change control
The introduction of new equipment or processes, and the
construction of new facilities, creates the potential for new
risks but, at the same time, presents opportunities to reduce
risk by building safety and health in at the design stage.
Getting this process right is critical to effectively managing
some of our most important safety and health challenges, e.g.
machinery, ergonomics and process safety.
The Packaging function is responsible for establishing,
maintaining and developing our filling and packaging Equipment
Specification Standards. To ensure that safety and health are
built in by design, this group issued machine specifications
(including the safety and health requirements) for 14 groups for
machines spanning product preparation, pack preparation,
consumer units, retail units and ancillary equipment. This
ensures that the machines are bought ‘right first time’ and we
mitigate safety and health risks at the design stage itself. It is a
significant step forward in our journey towards ‘zero incidents’
and we intend to build further on this initiative.
On the other hand, we also need to enhance our capability
to identify and manage safety and health issues when we
make smaller changes, e.g. when we modify equipment,
processes and procedures, ingredients and components,
organisations and personnel. We will, therefore, need to
ensure our change control procedures are comprehensive and
robust. For change control, considerable work was done in
2015. A task force comprising members from Manufacturing,
Quality Assurance, Engineering and Safety and Health worked
together to develop a new mandatory standard on the
management of change. It requires a mandatory risk
assessment and prior approval from all the functions in the
task force before any change can be initiated. A new IT tool
has also been created to facilitate easy implementation across
all sites. The roll-out will be done in 2016.
Permit-to-work
Permit-to-work (PTW) is one of the most important elements
in management of our high hazard tasks. It provides a final
opportunity for Nestlé to ensure that high-hazard tasks are
carried out safely and is, therefore, particularly relevant to the
management of fatality risks and contractor management.
PTW can also be a powerful tool for developing safety and
health competencies. Our units are encouraged to adopt a
coaching approach to the issuing of PTWs, in which permit
issuers help those doing the work to identify and assess risks
and select appropriate controls.
In 2015, full compliance was required to the mandatory
requirements, with a significantly enhanced approach to the
management of high-hazard tasks which was first established in
2013. At that time, the criteria for PTW (including roles and
responsibilities) were extended and clarified, and the process
for managing work under a PTW more clearly specified. The
role of PTW itself had also been clarified within the context of a
new model for assessing and managing high-hazard jobs, and
linked to the use of risk prediction. The new Standard and
Guidance: Management of High Hazard Tasks is now mandatory
for all Nestlé-managed sites. It applies to work done on-site,
both by Nestlé employees and contractors. We strongly believe
that strengthening the management of high-hazard tasks at our
sites is key to eliminating fatalities in the future.
Audit
As we continue to evolve our safety and health management
processes and improve our performance, we will also need to
enhance our audit processes to ensure they are a positive driver
for continuous improvement. The Nestlé Occupational Safety
and Health Management System requires that all units undertake
regular self-audits of compliance annually with legal and
corporate requirements, and with local policies and procedures.
In addition, once every three years, an independent
assessment by a calibrated assessor is required. During 2015,
we further strengthened the functional compliance
programme by adding checklists for safe driving and working
at height, and expanding functional compliance process to the
Supply Chain function. To enhance competencies at a local
level, we have conducted functional compliance sessions to
calibrate local assessors in Brazil, Turkey and the South Asia
region (India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka).
Our Nestlé Group Audit function complements this by
carrying out compliance audits around the world and
overseeing our risk management processes. We use
commonly occurring Group Audit findings to prioritise
improvement projects and training. In 2015, these findings
related to:
• Working time;
• Incident investigation and reporting; and
• Management of high-hazard tasks.
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