Health & Safety
The health and safety of our employees is GKN Aerospace’s number one priority
We believe in providing a safe working environment and are committed to continuous improvement in health and safety performance.
We are focused on cultivating a strong safety culture within GKN Aerospace through emphasising the importance of preventing avoidable incidents and implementing near miss reporting, which encourages an enhanced focus on hazard identification and awareness. Behaviour based programmes and continuous training and awareness campaigns remain central to the approach of all divisions in improving their safety performance
Supporting SDGs
Success in numbers
60%
Sites are certified to ISO 45001 or OHSAS 18001
10%
Target reduction in total injury rate per year
89%
Employees received health and safety training in 2020
10%
Target reduction in lost time accident rate per year
Safety Programmes
Our goal is zero preventable accidents.
To support this we have a number of GKN Aerospace-developed and globally applied behavioural safety programmes. These highlight potential safety issues, share best practice and help to minimise hazards at our sites. Led by our company-wide communications and awareness programme, thinkSAFE!, this consistent approach helps us work towards our strategic objective of driving operational excellence.
Health and Safety Certification
We require all our manufacturing plants to achieve certification to the health and safety standard OHSAS 18001 or equivalent, and the vast majority continue to be certified while a small number are working toward certification.
Health and Safety Performance
We measure our health and safety performance through two metrics: accident frequency rate (AFR) and accident severity rate (ASR).
Accident frequency rate (AFR) is used to track the number of lost time accidents and accident severity rate (ASR) records the number of days lost due to accidents and occupational ill health. Against these metrics we have made substantial progress over the last ten years and our performance compares favourably when benchmarking against other manufacturing organisations.
No fatalities were recorded across employees and contractors during 2020 and to support our overarching goal of stopping all preventable accidents for employees and contractors, we have set enhanced targets for reducing injuries and occupational illness in the workplace.
Safety Performance Targets
- Reduce lost time accident (LTA) rate by 10% per year.
- Reduce total injury rate by 10% per year.
Areas of focus
In 2021, four new health and safety awareness topics (one per quarter) will be added to the thinkSAFE! and thinkGREEN! online training portals, with a goal of achieving an attendance level 5 score, equivalent to over 91% completion by employees. GKN Aerospace’s long-term goal is zero injuries.
Auditing
Auditing is key to maintaining safety standards. We regularly carry out health and safety audits, with support from external experts where necessary. We share the key learnings and best practice from these audits across our company.