Health and safety at Lenzing

[ESRS S1-14; GRI 403-1, 403-8, 403-9, 403-10]

Employee wellbeing is crucial for Lenzing’s long-term business success and growth. Lenzing is ethically, legally, and morally responsible for occupational health and safety to ensure the wellbeing of its employees, contractors, and visitors, including customers.

The Lenzing Group’s health management system (“House of Health”) is based on the salutogenesis concept, which is tailored to the individual social and health care systems of the countries where Lenzing operates. It provides a conceptual framework for targeted investments in the health of Lenzing’s employees. Global Health Care Management works closely with the regional employees responsible for health issues as well as the department of Quality, Environment, Safety and Health (QESH).

The Safety Management System, founded on standards by the international Organization for Standardization (ISO), guides the company in mitigating health, safety and environmental risks. The company remains strongly focused on enhancing occupational health and safety performance as well as monitoring leading and lagging indicators. Safety dashboards provide to the teams daily access to essential safety metrics as part of their management dashboards.

100 percent of Lenzing’s employees and contracted staff working on company property are protected by the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Management system. All manufacturing sites are certified to ISO 45001. Lenzing conducts regular internal and external audits on many key activities, including safety, health, environmental performance and compliance with the Lenzing Code of Business Conduct. External audits are also conducted to review this data as part of the process to certify that Lenzing’s OHS management systems operate in conformance with ISO 45001.

The internal management system audits assess Lenzing’s OHS program for compliance with ISO 45001, company policies, contracts, and regulatory requirements on site level. Another internal audit process is led by Lenzing’s corporate QESH organization. Audits are scheduled on different sites on a rotating basis according to their relative risk. All sites are obligated to conduct periodic internal audits in accordance with corporate policy. Additionally, each site or business is subject to formal external OHS management system audits linked to OHS-related commitments or certifications, such as ISO 45001 and ISO 14001. Regular documented OHS management review meetings at all sites inform decisions and actions related to possible management system changes, which are recorded on the appropriate database system and communicated to employees.

Key figures: occupational accidents and work-related injuries

Current performance compared to previous years

Lenzing continues to perform well from a safety perspective as it continues to adapt to a changing workplace and business environment. Numbers of incidents decrease and Lenzing continues to add new commitments to improve its performances. In 2023, zero fatal accidents were recorded and Lenzing’s Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR)⁵⁵ for employees rose slightly from 0.6 (2022) to 0.7. In addition, the TRIFR for contractors increased slightly in 2023 to 0.5 from 0.4 in 2022. The employee rate for all work-related injuries rose from 3.3 in 2022 to 3.6 in 2023, while the rate for contractors increased from 1.1 in 2022 to 2.1 in 2023. (Note: In 2023, the Lenzing Group saw a reduction in worked contractor hours of 37 percent, while at the same time the number of work-related injuries reported increased, leading to a higher rate).

High-consequence work-related injury

In terms of broader personnel safety performance, high-consequence work-related injury events have remained at zero since 2019. A high-consequence injury is either a fatality/injury from which the worker cannot recover (e.g. amputation of a limb) or is not expected to recover fully to pre-injury health status within six months (e.g. fracture with complications).

Work-related hazards are identified and assessed at a site-specific level and fall into six core hazard types – safety, biological, physical, ergonomic, chemical and workload (psychosocial). The hazards are determined through various channels, including:

• Carrying out an internal risk assessment
• Analysis of adverse events to discover frequency, severity, and type of incidents or accidents.
• Analyzing data for causal relationships, such as the correlation between human factors, environmental conditions, equipment performance, and incident or accident outcomes.
• Reviewing safety information about products at workplaces
• Information from inspection and injury reports
• Setting up formal processes for employees to report hazards they see
• Conducting regular inspections of the workplace
• Collecting information published by relevant government agencies
• Consulting other outside groups that might have relevant information

Within Lenzing, work related hazards that pose a risk to ill health generally include chemical hazards (solvents, adhesives, dusts, etc.), physical hazards (noise, radiation, heat, etc.), biological hazards (infectious diseases), and ergonomic risk factors (heavy lifting, repetitive motions, vibration).

Health care at Lenzing’s production facilities

[GRI 403-3]

At all production sites, Lenzing gives employees access to an in-house primary care system, complementing the existing health systems of the individual countries. This also applies to Lenzing’s new plants in Brazil and Thailand. The sites and their health care facilities are visited by an occupational physician from the Lenzing Health Care & Wellbeing department periodically to ensure the quality of those services.

Lenzing draws on the services of medical partners in the regions around the sites to offer its employees a diagnosis and therapy service tailored to local needs. The range of medical services extends from several medical examinations and therapy sessions per week at the sites in Mobile (USA) and Grimsby (United Kingdom) through to health care services for family members at a clinic in the vicinity of the production site in Purwakarta (Indonesia).

The large production plants in Lenzing (Austria) and Purwakarta (Indonesia) also have their own outpatient clinics with qualified medical staff for quick, competent outpatient treatment of acute conditions and injuries as well as their own ambulances to ensure prompt follow-up treatment at special medical facilities. Lenzing facilities have first aiders trained in certified basic and regular first aid refresher courses.

Occupational medical care

In 2023, Lenzing Corporate Health Care & Wellbeing together with Global QESH continued to coordinate and give guidance on general company issues regarding occupational medical care at the different locations in order to exceed the minimum standards required by the individual countries. By enhancing competence in the occupational medical care of Lenzing’s regional partners, Lenzing will ensure that employees and managers have the best resources available to protect themselves from and deal with risks in the workplace.

Safety training

[GRI 403-5]

The vision of Lenzing is to “leave home healthy, come home healthy”. The aim is to provide a working environment and culture where people actively engage and drive health and safety excellence. It is recognized that all employees can influence health and safety performance and, through individual ownership and engagement, employees can contribute to a safer workplace.

Leadership is critical to behavior, and this is the central theme of Lenzing’s safety webinars, which were developed specifically for the company’s leaders. Six webinars outlining the human factors known as the ”dirty dozen” took place in 2023. These will continue in 2024. The aim is to understand how human factors play a role in adverse events, raise awareness and in the long-term, develop controls and procedures.

Lenzing also ensures that all employees receive adequate training on occupational health & safety topics, which is determined in line with the specific hazards to which employees are exposed while carrying out their tasks. Training schedules are prepared annually alongside refresher schedules in accordance with regulatory and compliance requirements. Additionally, induction training is given to both contractors and visitors to the various sites.

Health promotion

[GRI 403-6]

At the end of 2022, Lenzing started a formal corporate health improvement program, which continued in 2023. It provides a clear framework showing how local health promotion activities can be sponsored by a dedicated corporate health improvement budget. Sites can choose all local available health promotion activities, which are aligned with health topics chosen by Corporate Health Care. After approval by the Corporate Health Care & Wellbeing Manager they can perform the activity and have the related expenses reimbursed afterwards. A limit is imposed on the maximum expenses per head covered by this program.

Since 2019, the Lenzing Group has been focusing on promoting employee fitness as part of their regular activities. These programs aim to encourage and support employees in adopting a healthy lifestyle both at work and during their leisure time. To aid this effort, a healthy living app (Moveeffect^®) designed for corporate use to accommodate the needs of Lenzing’s employees at the various sites was adopted and distributed to all employees for voluntary use. The app’s purpose is to motivate employees to become more active. 2,800 employees are currently registered in the app.

Workers who are not employees

[GRI 403-7]

A large number of workers who are not directly employed by the Lenzing Group work at Lenzing operating sites and premises. As a result, contractors are carefully selected, with due consideration given to the strict occupational safety criteria Lenzing sets for its own employees.

Most have certified management systems for occupational health & safety. Where this is not possible, the company expects its contractors to be part of the regional contractor competency schemes or to implement additional controls to monitor occupational health and safety when this is not possible. Lenzing also has a nominated person as a direct contact for these contractors working under its control. When it comes to landlord and tenant health & safety, responsibility is shared and managed appropriately.

¹ TRIFR refers to the number of total recordable cases occuring in a workplace per 200,000 working hours.