Avon - The Company for Women - Corporate Responsibility

Our global safety strategy has six dimensions.

Click to enlarge

1. Increase management involvement: We engage our managers at various levels in the safety effort by establishing expectations and then educating them on how to contribute to improved safety. To accomplish this objective, we have developed a safety leadership training program. This two-hour program has been presented so far at twelve Avon sites and attended by approximately 700 managers and supervisors. We will continue to present these sessions at the remaining sites and offer training packages that can be translated in local languages and presented to an even larger audience.

Our facility in Poland is a leader in this regard. Approximately 30 associates have attended presentations by our global safety team; they then translated the training materials into Polish and trained 12 people to become trainers themselves. These trainers have already trained approximately 200 managers and supervisors and now are preparing to train the next level of the organization, team leaders.

2. Strengthen basic safety: Safety basics include such technical aspects as electrical safety, chemical safety, machine guarding, machinery lock-out/tag-out, confined space entry, working at height and fire protection. Within the next year we plan to introduce a comprehensive safety audit program. This program will help us to identify strengths, in addition to gaps, and help to improve safety. The strengths identified will be shared with others in the company as best practices. One such best practice was identified at our branch operation in Corby, UK. Empty wooden pallets are stored on their sides to create an obstacle course for training and testing forklift operations—a simple but powerful idea.

Wooden pallets create an obstacle course used for training forklift operations in Corby, UK

3. Set goals and measure performance: In 2007, we issued detailed criteria to all facilities as to how to record incidents involving injuries or property damage. As a result, our manufacturing plants and distribution centers around the globe are now uniformly capturing and reporting incident information.

Using the data recorded by our system, we publish global safety reports quarterly. The reports are distributed to all sites as well as regional and global management. This allows Avon’s leaders to recognize those that demonstrate excellent performance, those that make big improvements and those that need further improvement with regard to safety. Every year, we set stretch targets for the sites. Our vision and our ultimate goal are to achieve a combined total recordable case (TRC) rate¹ of below 1.0 for the entire company.

We are making steady progress toward meeting this long-term goal. Our manufacturing sector, which has maintained a strong focus on safety for many years, achieved a 42 percent reduction in TRC from 2006 to 2007 and improved further during 2008. The distribution centers, which began focusing more on safety in 2007, are also showing improvement. The TRC for this area of our operations has declined from 2.7 in 2007² to 1.2 in 2008.

Again, improvements at our Poland facility have been remarkable. Through the strong leadership of the plant director and focused efforts of the entire management team, safety staff and associates, this facility has reduced its TRC rate from 3.2 in 2006 to 0.9 in the first five months of 2008. Consequently, this site was selected for our “Excellence in Safety” award in 2008.

4. Communicate and increase awareness: Frequent communication, two-way dialogue and repetition of certain key messages form the cornerstones of our efforts to increase the focus on safety across the company and to educate our associates. For example, we communicate across the company when an incident occurs so that managers can check operations and take additional precautions to prevent similar incidents from happening. We also share best practices with all sites so they can incorporate them into their safety efforts.

Our intranet hosts a safety and health section that contains a variety of information, including new programs, activities, and contact information. Our bulletins, which outline minimum safety requirements, are also available here for download by anyone within the company. This has become a popular part of our internal website.

5. Increase safety and health competence: We believe that our safety programs are good only if people can understand them. Therefore, Avon associates across the company—from management to technical staff to associates working in other areas—need to know the general safety policies as well as safety practices specific to their job functions.

For example, to ensure the safe use of flammable liquids, our processing staff must understand the features of explosion-proof equipment and how it provides protection. Our maintenance people must know how to complete repairs and maintenance so as not to defeat the protection provided. And our associates working in the processing areas must know how to ensure that this protection is effective.

We also focus on increasing the competence of our health and safety staff, so that they can assist the company in protecting our people and property. We work with external consultants to provide a higher level of expertise and supplement our safety staff’s efforts. On our safety and health intranet website, we have special sections dedicated to “safety resources” and “professional development,” from which the staff can review and download articles, guidelines and checklists.

6. Establish global standards: We are a global company, and we need to ensure that all of our sites, no matter where they are located, provide at least the minimum level of safety in their operations. Just meeting the requirements of local regulations is not enough in some cases, however, because local regulatory standards may be low. Therefore, we are in the process of establishing more stringent global safety requirements, which each site must meet. Indeed, if the local regulations have higher requirements, then they must meet those higher standards as well.

¹ The TRC rate indicates the total number of “Avon Reportable” cases (lost time plus medical treatment beyond first-aid), per 100 full-time associates. In Avon’s previous Corporate Responsibility Report, Avon reported the Recordable Injury Case Rate and Lost Workday Case Rate, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Beginning in 2008, however, Avon will report the total reportable case (TRC) rate only. Avon believes the TRC rate is more reflective of our overall safety performance because it is influenced less by local practices and chance factors beyond our control.

² 2007 is the first year of data for our distribution centers.