Occupational health and safety

Slight increase in the accident rate

In the year under review, the accident rate rose slightly to 4.1 accidents per million working hours (PY 4.0). With the “Vision Zero” initiative launched in 2024, we are making great efforts to reduce the accident rate and achieve the ambitious target of zero accidents by 2030. Based on an accident rate of 4.7 in 2020, the target for 2025 is 2.35 accidents per million working hours.

“Occupational health and safety” was no longer classified as a material topic in the materiality analysis in 2022. Together with our stakeholders, we decided to classify it as a standard topic, much like the topics of “Human rights” and “Socioeconomic compliance”. These define the framework for our business activity and we will continue to report on these topics on an ongoing basis, but not in the same scope as for material topics.

A focus on occupational health and safety

The company’s employees are crucial to the success of the SFS Group, which makes creating a healthy and safe working environment a major concern at SFS. This holds particularly true at our production sites, where the work poses health and safety risks for employees. SFS minimizes these risks by implementing numerous measures. “The quality, environmental and safety policy that we are implementing is aimed at ensuring the health and safety of our employees when carrying out their work, as well as preventing accidents at work and promoting mental and physical health.” – this is a commitment we made in our sustainability guidelines.

Measures to reduce the accident rate

In order to reduce potential risks and negative consequences for employees’ health at the workplace and lower the accident rate, we are implementing the following measures:

• Identifying and assessing hazards, burdens and risks on a regular basis to continuously improve safety precautions
• Preventive measures such as communicating the “10 SFS Safety Rules” to prevent accidents
• Engaging in a constant dialog with relevant stakeholders to improve working conditions (see “Compliance and due diligence”)
• Encouraging employees to take personal responsibility for their own health by identifying hazards preventively and carrying out risk assessments at their own workplaces
• Obligation to report unsafe circumstances to managers and supervisors (opportunity to submit anonymous reports)

Employees are encouraged to put forward ideas and suggestions for improvement via various channels, such as the “mySFS app”, an ideas box, shop floor meetings and personal meetings. There will be no negative consequences for employees who report any noticeable problems or violations. To support the measures already in place and to gradually move closer to achieving our goal of zero occupational accidents by 2030, the SFS Group launched the “Vision Zero”  initiative in the year under review. Under this initiative, the accident rate is to be integrated into employees’ performance reviews, an annual safety day is to be held, regular awareness campaigns are to be organized and unannounced walkthroughs of the production facilities are to be carried out to identify any safety hazards, to name but a few of the measures to be introduced.

Difference in the accident rate between the segments

At the end of 2024, the SFS Group employed 13,689 employees (PY 13,198, figures in FTE). The reporting entities comprise 13,078 FTE (PY 12,666). The number of accidents per million working hours stood at 4.1, representing a slight increase on the previous year. However, this trend differed from one segment to the next. While the number of accidents in the Engineered Components segment remained stable overall, the accident rate in the D&L segment rose once again. In contrast, the Fastening Systems segment made good progress in reducing the accident rate, which can be mainly attributed to the introduction of the “Vision Zero” initiative. In order to reduce the number of occupational accidents in the long term, the measures planned as part of this initiative will also be implemented on a wide scale in the two other segments in the coming year. SFS has set itself the target of halving the occupational accident rate by 2025. To achieve this ambitious target, the accident rate of 4.7 recorded in the 2020 reference year must be reduced to 2.35 accidents per million working hours in 2025.

Zero accidents with serious consequences

Although the number of work-related accidents has risen slightly to 107 (PY 103), we made vital progress in reducing the number of working days lost: During the year under review, the number of working days lost fell by 32.9% year-on-year to 1,262 days (PY 1,880). No work-related injuries with serious consequences were recorded. This pleasing trend can be attributed to the increased focus on creating a safe and healthy working environment and is evidence of the first successes of the “Vision Zero” initiative.

ISO 45001 certification expanded

The prevention of all accidents, regardless of their severity, remains the top priority. In addition to the blanket roll out of the Vision Zero measures, we remain focused on expanding ISO 45001 certification. This standard has proven itself to be an efficient instrument for promoting occupational health and safety, and is therefore an integral part of our management approach. The SFS Group certified 2 locations (PY 5) in accordance with ISO 45001 during the year under review. This now makes 27 locations that have been validated accordingly, with 13 more locations set to follow in the coming years.

GRI 403-9 Work-related injuries